LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



Shelf-.fl..4- 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



L V 



. 






. 






COAL AND THE COAL MINES 



BY 



HOMER GREENE 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM DRAWINGS BY 
THE AUTHOR 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

(Cfe 1ftter#&e press, Camfcri&ge 



<b 




TNB01 



Copyright, 1889, 
By HOMER GREENE. 

All rights reserved. 



y 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, U. S. A. : 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. 



ut^'A \6 







GROUND PLAN AND LONGITUDINAL SECTION OF CHA 



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To 

MY SON, 

GILES POLLARD GREENE, 

WHO WAS BORN ON THE DAY THIS BOOK WAS BEGUN, 

AND WHOSE SMILES AND TEARS 

THROUGH HALF A YEAR 

HAVE BEEN A DAILY INSPIRATION IN THE WORK, 

IS NOW DEDICATED 

BY 

THE AUTHOR. 



PREFACE. 



In treating of so large a theme in so small a 
compass it is impossible to do more than make an 
outline sketch. It has been the aim of the author 
to give reliable information free from minute 
details and technicalities. That information has 
been, for the most part, gathered through personal 
experience in the mines. The literature of this 
special subject is very meagre, and the author is 
unable to acknowledge any real indebtedness to 
more than half a dozen volumes. First among 
these is the valuable treatise on " Coal Mining," 
by H. M. Chance of the Pennsylvania Geological 
Survey. Other volumes from which the author 
has derived considerable information are the State 
geological reports of Pennsylvania, the mine in- 
spector's reports of the same State, and the " Coal 
Trade Annuals," issued by Frederick E. Saward 
of New York. 

The author desires also to acknowledge his in- 



vi PREFACE. 

debtedness for valuable assistance in the prepara- 
tion of this work to John B. Law and Andrew 
Bryden, mining superintendents, and George 
Johnson, real estate agent, all of the Pennsyl- 
vania Coal Company, at Pittston, Pennsylvania, 
and to the officers of the Wyoming Historical 
and Geological Society of Wilkes Barre, Penn- 
sylvania. 

HOMER GREENE. 

HONESDALE, Pa., 

May 15, 1889. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. In the Beginning 1 

II. The Composition of Coal . 6 

III. When Coal was Formed 14 

IV. How the Coal Beds Lie 22 

V. The Discovery of Coal . . 35 

VI. The Introduction of Coal into Use .... 51 

VII. The Way into the Mines 75 

VIII. A Plan of a Coal Mine 94 

IX. The Miner at Work 112 

X. When the Mine Roof Falls 127 

XI. Air and Water in the Mines 147 

XII. The Dangerous Gases 159 

XIII. The Anthracite Coal Breaker 176 

XIV. In the Bituminous Coal Mines 192 

XV. The Boy Workers at the Mines 204 

XVI. Miners and their Wages 222 



COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 



CHAPTER L 

IN THE BEGINNING. 

Every one knows that mineral coal is dug out 
from the crust of the earth. But the question 
frequently is asked concerning it, How and under 
what conditions was it formed ? In order to an- 
swer this inquiry it is necessary to have recourse 
to the science of geology. 

A brief review of the geological history of the 
earth's crust will be of prime importance, and it 
will not be inappropriate to go back to the origin 
of the earth itself. But no man can begin at the 
beginning ; that is too far back in the eternal 
mists; only the Infinite Mind can reach to it. 
There is a point, however, to which speculation 
can journey, and from which it has brought back 
brilliant theories to account for the existence of 
the planet on which we live. The most philo- 
sophic of these theories, as it certainly is the most 
popular, is the one known as the Nebular Hy- 
pothesis, propounded by Laplace, the great French 



2 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

astronomer, in 1796. This theory accords so well 
with the laws of physics, and with the human 
knowledge of the age, that most of the great 
astronomers have adopted it as the best that has 
been given to us, and the world of science may 
be said to have accepted it as final. Let us sup- 
pose, then, in accordance with this theory, that 
our earth was, at one time, a ball of liquid fire, 
revolving on its axis, and moving, in its orbit, 
around the parent sun with the motion imparted 
to it in the beginning. As cooling and condensa- 
tion went on, a crust was formed on its surface, 
and water was formed on the crust. The waters, 
however, were no sooner spread out than they 
were tossed by the motion of the atmosphere into 
waves, and these waves, by constant friction 
against the rock crust of the earth, wore it down 
into pebbles, sand, and mud. The silt thus made 
being washed up on to the primitive rock and left 
there by the receding waters became again as hard 
and firm as before. Occasionally a subsidence, 
due to the contraction of the earth's body, would 
take place and the sea would again sweep over the 
entire surface, depositing another layer of silt on 
the one already formed, or possibly washing that 
again into sand and pebbles. This process con- 
tinued through an indefinite period of time, form- 
ing layer npon layer of stratified rock, or exca- 
vating great hollows in the surface already formed. 
That period in the history of the earth's crust 



IN THE BEGINNING. 6 

before stratification began is known as Arehean 
time. This was followed by the period known as 
Paleozoic time, which is divided into three ages. 
The first is the age of Invertebrates. It was dur- 
ing this age that life made its advent on the earth. 
The waters were the first to bring it forth, but 
before the close of the age it began also to appear 
on the land, in isolated spots, in the simplest forms 
of vegetation. The next age is known as the age 
of Fishes, during winch vegetable life became 
more varied and abundant, winged insects floated 
in the air, and great sharks and gars swam in the 
seas. Then came the. Carboniferous age or age 
of Coal Plants, in which vast areas of what are 
now the Middle, Southern, and Western States 
were covered with low marshes and shallow seas, 
and were rich and rank with multitudinous forms 
of vegetation. But these marshes were again 
and again submerged and covered with material 
washed up by the waves before the final subsid- 
ence of the waters left them as a continuing por- 
tion of the dry land. It was at the close of the 
Carboniferous age that great disturbances took 
place in the earth's crust. Before this the rock 
strata had been comparatively level ; now they 
were folded, flexed, broken, rounded into hills 
pushed resistlessly up into mountain ranges. It 
was at this time that the upheaval of the great 
Appalachian Range in North America took place. 
Following this came Mesozoic time, which had 



4 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

but one age, the age of Reptiles. It was during 
this age that the type of reptiles reached its cul- 
mination. The land generally brought forth veg- 
etation, though not with the prolific richness and 
luxury of the Carboniferous age. Birds, insects, 
and creeping things were abundant, and monsters 
of the saurian tribe swam in the seas, roamed 
through the marshes, crawled on the sandy shores, 
and took short flights through the air. The last 
great division is known as Cenozoic time, and 
covers two ages, the age of Mammals and the age 
of Man. It was during the mammalian age that 
trees of modern types, such as oak, maple, beech, 
etc., first made their appearance, and mammalian 
animals of great variety and size, both herbivo- 
rous and carnivorous, roamed through the forests. 
True birds flew in the air, true snakes crawled 
upon the ground, and in the waters were whales 
and many kinds of fishes of the present day. But 
the marine monsters and the gigantic and fero- 
cious saurians of an earlier age had disappeared. 
So the world became fitted to be the dwelling-place 
of the human race. Then began the age of Man, 
an age which is yet not complete. 

Such, in brief, is the history of the earth as 
the rocks have told it to us. Without their help 
we could know but little of the story. Through 
all the j)eriods of time and all the ages, they 
were being formed, layer upon layer, of sand and 
silt, of mud and pebbles, hardening with the pass- 





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COLUMNAR SECTION OF 
EARTH'S CRUST. 



THE 



IN THE BEGINNING. 5 

ing of the centuries. But while they were still 
soft they received impressions of the feet of birds 
and of beasts, they were marked by the waves 
and were cracked in the fierce heat of the sun, 
and their surfaces were pitted by the rain-drops 
of passing showers. Shells, corals, and sponges 
were imbedded in them ; the skeletons of fishes 
and the bones of animals that walked or crept 
upon the land or flew in the air were covered 
over by them ; they caught and held the drooping 
fern, the falling leaf and twig and nut; they 
closed around the body of the tree itself and 
buried it from sight ; and as the soil hardened 
into rock, bone and shell, leaf and stem, hardened 
with it and became part of it. To-day we find 
these fossil remains, sometimes near the surface 
of the earth, sometimes hundreds or thousands 
of feet below it. We uncover them from the 
soil, we break them from the rock, we blast them 
out in the quarries, we dig them from the mines 
of coal and ore. It is by them and by the struc- 
ture of the rock which contains them that we 
read the history of the earth, a history covering so 
long a period of time from the beginning of the 
stratification of the rocks to the age when man 
appeared upon the globe that no one has yet dared 
to reckon the millions upon millions of years 
which intervened, and give the result of his com- 
putation to the world as true. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE COMPOSITION OP COAL. 

The first question that would naturally be 
asked concerning the subject with which we are 
dealing is, What is coal? 

In reply it may be said that it is a mineral. 
It is black or brown in color, solid, heavy, and 
amorphous. The specific gravity of the average 
Pennsylvania anthracite is about 1.6, and of the 
bituminous coal about 1.4. There are four vari- 
eties of mineral coal, namely : anthracite, bitu- 
minous, lignite or brown coal, and cannel coal. 
To this list it would not be improj)er to add peat, 
since it partakes of most of the characteristics of " 
mineral coal, and would doubtless develop into 
such coal if the process of transformation were 
allowed to continue undisturbed. The principal 
element contained in each of these different kinds 
of coal is carbon. An analysis of an average piece 
of Pennsylvania anthracite would show the fol- 
lowing chemical composition : — 

Fixed carbon . . . . . .86.4 

Ash 6.2 

Water 3.7 

Volatile matter . . . . . 3.1 
Sulphur .6 

Total 100 



THE COMPOSITION OF COAL. 



The composition of the bituminous coals of 
Pennsylvania, as represented by the gas coal of 
Westmoreland County, is shown by analysis to be 
as follows : — - 



Fixed carbon 
Volatile matter 
Ash . 
Water 
Sulphur 



55. 

37.5 
5.4 
1.4 

.7 



Total 



100 



An analysis of coal from the Pittsburgh region 
would show its percentage of carbon to be from 
58 to 64, and of volatile matter and ash to be pro- 
portionately less. 

There is no strict line of demarcation between 
the anthracite and the bituminous coals. They 
are classed generally, according to the amount of 
carbon and volatile matter contained in them, 
as : — 

Hard-dry Anthracites, 

Semi-Anthracite, 

Semi-Bituminous, 

Bituminous. 

Coals of the first class contain from 91 to 98 
per cent, of carbon, and of the second class from 
85 to 90 per cent. The volatile matter in the 
third class is usually less than 18 per cent., and in 
the fourth class more than 18 per cent, of its 
composition. 



8 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

The anthracite coal is hard and brittle, and 
has a rich black color and a metallic lustre. It 
ignites with difficulty, and at first burns with a 
small blue flame of carbonic oxide. This disap- 
pears, however, when ignition is complete. No 
smoke is given off during combustion. Semi- 
anthracite coal is neither so hard, so dense, nor so 
brilliant in lustre as the anthracite, though when 
once fully ignited it has all the characteristic fea- 
tures of the latter in combustion. It is found 
principally at the western ends of the anthracite 
coal basins. 

Bituminous coal is usually deep black in color, 
with little or no lustre, having planes of cleavage 
which run nearly at right angles with each other, 
so that when the coal is broken it separates into 
cubical fragments. It ignites easily and burns 
with a yellowish flame. It gives off smoke and 
leaves a large percentage of ashes after combus- 
tion. That variety of it known as caking or cok- 
ing coal is the most important. This is quite soft, 
and will not bear much handling. During com- 
bustion it swells, fuses, and finally runs together 
in large porous masses. 

Following the question of the composition of 
coal comes the question of its origin, of which, 
indeed, there is no longer any serious doubt. It 
is generally conceded that coal is a vegetable pro- 
duct, and there are excellent reasons for this belief. 
The fragments of which coal is composed have been 



THE COMPOSITION OF COAL, 9 

greatly deformed by compression and decomposi- 
tion. Bat when one of those fragments is made 
so thin that it will transmit light, and is then sub- 
jected to a powerful microscope, its vegetable 
structure may readily be distinguished ; that is, the 
fragments are seen to be the fragments of plants. 
Immediately under every separate seam of coal 
there is a stratum of what is known as fire clay. It 
may, under the beds of softer coals, be of the con- 
sistency of clay ; but under the coal seams of the 
harder varieties it is usually in the form of a slaty 
rock. This fire clay stratum is always present, and 
contains in great abundance the fossil impressions 
of roots and stems and twigs, showing that it was 
once the soil from which vegetation grew luxuri- 
antly. It is common also to find fossil tree-stems 
lying mashed flat between the layers of black 
slate which form the roof of the coal mines, also 
the impressions of the leaves, nuts, and seeds 
which fell from these trees while they were living. 
In some beds of cannel coal whole trees have been 
found, with roots, branches, leaves, and seeds com- 
plete, and ail converted into the same quality of 
coal by which they were surrounded. In short, 
the strata of the coal measures everywhere are full 
of the fossil impressions of plants, of great variety 
both in kind and size. 

If a piece of wood be subjected to heat and 
great pressure, a substance is obtained which 
strongly resembles mineral coal. 



10 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

That coal contains a very large proportion of 
carbon in its composition has already been noted. 
If, therefore, it is a vegetable product, the vege- 
tation from which it was formed must have been 
subjected to some process by which a large part 
of its substance was eliminated, since "wood or 
woody fibre contains only from 20 to 25 per cent, 
of carbon. But wood can be transformed, by 
combustion, inix) charcoal, a material containing 
in its composition 98 per cent, of carbon, or a 
greater percentage than the best anthracite con- 
tains. This cannot be done, however, by burning 
wood in an open fire, for in that case its carbon 
unites with atmospheric oxygen and passes invis- 
ibly into the air. It must be subjected to a pro- 
cess of smothered combustion ; free access of air 
must be denied to it while it is burning. Then 
the volatile matter will be freed and expelled, and, 
since the carbon cannot come in contact with the 
oxygen of the air, it will be retained, together 
with a small percentage of ash. The result will be 
charcoal, or coal artificially made. The principle 
on which this transformation is based is combus- 
tion or decomposition out of contact with atmos- 
pheric air. But Nature is as familiar with this 
principle as is man, and she may not only be dis- 
covered putting it in practice, but the entire pro- 
cess may be watched from beginning to end. One 
must go, for this purpose, first, to a peat bed. 
This is simply an accumulation of the remains of 



THE COMPOSITION OF COAL. 11 

plants which grew and decayed on the spot where 
they are now found. As these remains were de- 
posited each year, every layer became buried under 
its succeeding layer, until finally a great thick- 
ness was obtained. When we remove the upper 
layer we find peat with its 52 to 66 per cent, of 
carbon, and the deeper we go the better is the 
quality of the substance. It may be cut out in 
blocks with sharp spades, the water may be 
pressed from the blocks, and they may be stacked 
up, covered and dried, and used for fuel. In most 
peat bogs the process of growth is going on, and 
may be watched. There is a certain kind of moss 
called sphagnum, which in large part makes up 
the peat-producing vegetation. Its roots die annu- 
ally, but from the living top new roots are sent out 
each year. The workmen who dig peat under- 
stand that if this surface is destroyed the growth 
of the bed must stop ; consequently in many in- 
stances they have removed the sod carefully, and 
after taking out a stratum of peat have replaced 
the sod in order that the bed may be renewed. 
There is little doubt that if these beds of peat could 
lie undisturbed and covered over through many 
ages they would take on all the characteristics of 
mineral coal. 

A step farther back in geological history we 
reach the period of the latest formations of lignite 
or brown coal. This coal is first found in the 
strata of the glacial period, or first period in the 



12 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

age of Man. But it is found there in an unde- 
veloped state. The woody fibre has not yet un- 
dergone the complete transformation into coal. 
The trunks and branches of trees have indeed be- 
come softened to the consistence of soap, but they 
still retain their natural color. Going back, how- 
ever, to the strata of the Miocene or second period 
of the Tertiary age or age of Mammals, we find 
that this wood has become black, though it has 
not yet hardened. But when we reach the upper 
cretaceous or last period of the age of Reptiles, 
the transformation into coal has become com- 
plete. The woody fibre is now black, hard, and 
compact, though it may still be easily disaggre- 
gated by atmospheric action, and we have the true 
lignite, so called because of its apparent woody 
structure. 

The next step takes us back to the bituminous 
coal of the Carboniferous age, the character and 
consistency of which has already been noted, and 
finally we reach the complete development in an- 
thracite. It is, however, the opinion of the best 
geologists that the bituminous and anthracite coals 
are of the same age, and were originally of the 
same formation and character. That is, they were 
all bituminous ; but during the violent contortions 
and upheavals of the earth's crust at the time of 
the Appalachian revolution at the close of the 
Carboniferous age, the bituminous coals involved 
in that disturbance were changed by heat, pres- 



THE COMPOSITION OF COAL. 13 

sure, and motion, and the consequent expulsion of 
volatile matter, from bituminous to anthracite. 

Cannel coal is a variety of bituminous coal, 
burning with great freedom, the flame of which 
affords considerable light. It was called " candle 
coal " by the English people who first used it, as 
it often served as a substitute for that household 
necessity. But the name soon became corrupted 
to "cannel," and has so remained. It is duller 
and more compact than the ordinary bituminous 
coal, and it can be wrought in a lathe and pol- 
ished. A certain variety of it, found in the lower 
oolitic strata of Yorkshire in England, is manu- 
factured into a kind of jewelry, well known by its 
popular name of jet. 



CHAPTER III. 

WHEN COAL WAS FORMED. 

It becomes of interest now to examine briefly 
into the causes and process of the transformation 
from vegetable substance into coal, to note the 
character of the vegetation which went to make 
up the coal beds, and to glance at the animal life 
of the period. 

As has already been said, the plants of the 
Carboniferous age were exceedingly abundant 
and luxuriant. They grew up richly from the 
clayey soil, and formed dense jungles in the vast 
marshes which covered so large an area of the 
earth's surface. Ferns, mosses, and tufts of sur- 
face vegetation, and the leaves, branches, and 
trunks of trees fell and decayed on the place where 
they grew, only to make the soil more fertile and 
the next growth richer and more luxuriant. Year 
after year, century after century, this process of 
growth and decay went on, until the beds of vege- 
table matter thus deposited had reached a great 
thickness. But condensation was still in progress 
in the earth's body, and in consequence of it her 
crust, of necessity, at times contracted and fell. 
When it did so the land sank throughout vast 



WHEN COAL WAS FORMED. 15 

areas, these beds of incipient coal went down, and 
over the great marshes the waters swept again, 
bringing drift of vegetation from higher levels to 
add to that already buried. Then over these 
deposits of vegetable matter the sand and. mud and 
gravel were laid up anew, and the clayey soil from 
which the next rich growth should spring was 
spread out upon the surface. This process was 
repeated again and again, as often, indeed, as we 
find seams of coal in any coal bed. Thus the final 
condition for the formation of coal was met, the 
exclusion of atmospheric air from this mass of de- 
caying vegetation was complete, and under the 
water of the ocean, under the sand and silt of the 
shore, under the new deposits of succeeding ages, 
the transformation went on, the wood of the Car- 
boniferous era became the coal of to-day, while 
above and below it the sand and clay were hard- 
ened into rock and shale. 

The remarkable features of the vegetation of 
the coal era were the size and abundance of its 
plants. Trees of that time whose trunks were 
from one to three feet in diameter, and which 
grew to a height of from forty to one hundred 
feet, are represented in our day by mere stems a 
fraction of an inch in diameter and but one or two 
feet high. A comparison of quantity would show 
differences as great as does the comparison of size. 

But at that time all the conditions were favor- 
able for the rapid and enormous growth of vege- 



16 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

tation. The air was laden with carbon, which is 
the principal food for plants ; so laden, indeed, 
that man, who is eminently an oxygen-breathing 
animal, could not have lived in it. The great 
humidity of the atmosphere was another element 
favorable to growth. Vegetation never lacked for 
an abundance of moisture either at root or leaf. 
Then, too, the climate was universally warm. Over 
the entire surface of the earth the heat was greater 
than it is to-day at the torrid zone. It must be 
remembered that the internal fires of the globe 
have been constantly cooling and receding, and 
that the earth, in the Carboniferous age, was sub- 
jected to the greater power of a larger sun than 
shines upon us to-day. 

With all these circumstances in its favor, 
warmth, moisture, and an atmosphere charged 
heavily with carbon, vegetation could not help 
but flourish. That it did flourish amazingly is 
abundantly shown by its fossil remains. The im- 
pressions of more than five hundred different 
species of plants that grew in the Carboniferous 
era have been found in the coal measures. There 
are few of them that bear any direct analogy 
to existing species, and these few have their 
counterparts only in the torrid zone. The most 
abundant of the plants of the coal era were the 
ferns. Their fossil remains are found in great 
profusion and variety in most of the rocks of the 
coal-bearing strata. There was also the plant 



WHEN COAL WAS FORMED. 17 

known as the tree fern, which attained a height of 
twenty or thirty feet and carried a single tuft of 
leaves radiating from its top. Probably the spe- 
cies next in abundance, as it certainly is next in 
importance, to the ferns is that of the Lepidoden- 
drids. It doubtless contributed the greatest pro- 
portion of woody material to the composition of 
coal. The plants of this species were forest trees, 
but are supposed to have been analogous to the 
low club mosses of the present. Fossil trunks of 
Lepidodenclrids have been found measuring from 
one hundred to one hundred and thirty feet in 
length, and from six to ten feet in diameter. 

Similar in appearance to the Lepidodendrids 
were the Sigillariae, which were also very abun- 
dant. The Conifers were of quite a different spe- 
cies from those already named, and probably 
grew on higher ground. They were somewhat 
analogous to the modern pine. 

The Calamites belonged to the horsetail family. 
They grew up with long, reed-like, articulated 
stems to a height of twenty feet or more, and with 
a diameter of ten or twelve inches. They stood 
close together in the muddy ground, forming an 
almost impenetrable thicket, and probably made 
up a very large percentage of the vegetation which 
was transformed into coal, 

One of the most abundant species of plants of 
the coal era is that of Stigmaria. Stout stems, from 
two to four inches in diameter, branched downward 



18 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

from a short trunk, and then grew out in long 
root-like processes, floating in the water or trail- 
ing on the mud to distances of twenty or thirty- 
feet. These are the roots with which the under 
clay of every coal seam is usually filled. 

The plants which have been described, together 
with their kindred species, formed the largest and 
most important part of the vegetation of the Car- 
boniferous age. But of the hundreds of varie- 
ties which then abounded, the greater portion 
reached their highest stage of perfection in the 
coal era, and became extinct before the close of 
Paleozoic time. Other types were lost during 
Mesozoic time, and to-day there is scarcely a 
counterpart in existence of any of the multitude 
of forms of plant life that grew and flourished in 
that far-off age of the world. 

The animal life of the Carboniferous era was 
confined almost entirely to the water. The dry 
land had not yet begun to produce in abundance 
the higher forms of living things. There were 
spiders there, however, and scorpions, and centi- 
pedes, and even cockroaches. There were also 
land snails, beetles, locusts, and mayflies. Rep- 
tiles, with clumsy feet and dragging tails, prowled 
about on the wet sands of the shore, leaving foot- 
prints that were never effaced by time or the ele- 
ments, and are found to-day in the layers of the 
rocks, almost as perfect as when they were 
formed, millions of years ago. But the waters 



WHEN COAL WAS FORMED. 19 

teemed with animal life. On the bottom of the 
shallow seas lay shells and corals in such abun- 
dance and variety that from the deposits of their 
remains great beds of limestone have been formed. 
Broken into minute fragments by the action of the 
waves and washed up by the sea during periods of 
submergence, they were spread over the beds of 
carboniferous deposits, and became the rock strata 
through which the drills and shafts of to-day are 
sunk to reach the veins of mineral coal. 

Fishes were numerous. Some of them, belong- 
ing to species allied to the modern shark, were of 
great size, with huge fin spines fully eighteen 
inches in length. These spines have been found 
as fossils, as have also the scales, teeth, and bones. 
Complete skeletons of smaller fishes of the ganoid 
order were preserved in the rock as it hardened, 
and now form fossil specimens which are un- 
equaled in beauty and perfection. 

Besides the fishes, there were the swimming 
reptiles ; amphibian monsters, allied to the ich- 
thyosaurs and plesiosaurs which were so abundant 
during the Reptilian age that followed. These 
animals are known as enaliosaurs. They attained 
great size, being from twenty-five to fifty feet in 
length ; they had air-breathing apparatus, and pro- 
pelled themselves through the water with paddles 
like the paddles of whales. Their enormous jaws 
were lined with rows of sharp, pointed teeth, and 
their food was fish, shell-fish, and any other kind 



20 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

of animal life that came within their reach. They 
devoured even their own species. Living mostly 
in the open seas or fresh-water lagoons, they some- 
times chased their prey far up the rivers, and some- 
times basked in the sunshine on the sands of the 
shore. Frightful in aspect, fierce, and voracious, 
they were the terror and the tyrants of the seas. 

Such were the animals, such were the plants, 
that lived and died, that flourished and decayed, 
in the age when coal was being formed and fash- 
ioned and hidden away in the crust of the earth. 
That the fauna and flora of to-day have few pro- 
totypes among them should be little cause for 
regret. There was, indeed, hardly a feature in the 
landscape of the coal era that would have had a 
familiar look to an inhabitant of the world in its 
present age. In place of the hills and valleys as 
we have them now, there were great plains sloping 
imperceptibly to the borders of the sea. There 
were vast marshes, shallow fresh-water lakes, and 
broad and sluggish rivers. Save bj^ isolated 
peaks the Rocky Mountains had not yet been up- 
lifted from the face of the deep, and the great 
West of to-day was a waste of waters. In the 
wide forests no bird's song was ever heard, no 
flashing of a wing was ever seen, no serpent trailed 
its length upon the ground, no wild beast searched 
the woods for prey. The spider spun his web in 
silence from the dew-wet twigs, the locust hopped 
drowsily from leaf to leaf, the mayfly floated 



WHEN COAL WAS FORMED. 21 

lightly in the heavy air, the slow-paced snail left 
his damp track on the surfaces of the rocks, and 
the beetles, lifting the hard coverings from their 
gauzy wings, flew aimlessly from place to place. 
In seas and lakes and swampy pools strange fishes 
swam, up from the salt waters odd reptiles crawled 
to sun themselves upon the sandy shore or make 
their way through the dense jungles of the swamps, 
and out where the ocean waves were dashing, 
fierce monsters of the sea darted on their prey, or 
churned the water into foam in savage fights with 
each other. 

But in all the world there were no flowers. 
Stems grew to be trunks, branches were sent out, 
leaves formed and fell, the land was robed and 
wrapped in the richest, most luxuriant foliage, yet 
the few buds that tried to blossom were scentless 
and hidden, and earth w T as still void of the beauty 
and the fragrance of the flowers. 



CHAPTER IV. 

HOW THE COAL BEDS LIE. 

The process of growth, deposition, submer- 
gence, and burial, described in the preceding 
chapter, continued throughout the Carboniferous 
age. Each period of inundation and of the cov- 
ering over of beds of vegetable deposit by sand 
and silt is marked by the layers of stratified rock 
that intervene between, and that overlie the sepa- 
rate seams of coal in the coal measures of to-day. 
The number of these coal seams indicates the 
number of periods during which the growth and 
decay of vegetation was uninterrupted. This 
number, in the anthracite coal regions, varies from 
ten to thirty or thereabouts, but in the bituminous 
regions it scarcely ever exceeds eight or ten. The 
thickness of the separate coal seams also varies 
greatly, ranging from a fraction of an inch up to 
sixty or seventy feet. Indeed, there are basins of 
small extent in the south of France and in India 
where the seam is two hundred feet thick. It is 
seldom, however, that workable seams of anthra- 
cite exceed twenty feet in thickness, and by far 
the largest number of them do not go above eight 
or ten, while the seams of bituminous coal do not 



HOW THE COAL BEDS LIE. 23 

even average these last figures in thickness. 
Neither is the entire thickness of a seam made 
up of pure coaL Bands of slate called "part- 
ings" usually run horizontally through a seam, 
dividing it into " benches*" These partings vary 
from a fraction of an inch to several feet in thick- 
ness, and make up from one fifth to one seventh 
of the entire seam. 

The rock strata between the coal seams range 
from three feet to three hundred feet in thickness, 
and in exceptional cases go as high as five or six 
hundred feet. Perhaps a fair average would be 
from eighty to one hundred feet. These rock 
intervals are made up mostly of sandstones and 
shales. The combined average thickness of the 
coal seams of Pennsylvania varies from twenty- 
five feet at Pittsburgh in the western bituminous 
region to one hundred and twenty feet at Potts- 
ville in the eastern anthracite district, and may 
be said to average about one fiftieth of the entire 
thickness of the coal measures, which is placed at 
4,000 feet. 

Some conception may be had of the enormous 
vegetable deposits of the Carboniferous era by 
recalling the fact that the resultant coal in each 
seam is only from one ninth to one sixteenth in 
bulk of the woody fibre from which it has been 
derived, the loss being mainly in oxygen and 
hydrogen. It is probable that the coal seams as 
well as the rock strata had attained a comparative 



24 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

degree of hardness before the close of the Car- 
boniferous age. It was at the close of this age 
that those profound disturbances of the earth's 
crust throughout eastern North America took 
place which have already been referred to. 
Hitherto, through the long ages of Paleozoic 
time, there had been comparative quiet. As cool- 
ing and contraction of the earth's body were still 
going on, there were doubtless oscillations of sur- 
face and subsidence of strata in almost continu- 
ous progress. But these movements were very 
slow, amounting, perhaps, to not more than a foot 
in a century. Yet in Pennsylvania and Virginia 
the sinking of the crust up to the close of the 
Carboniferous age amounted to 35,000 or 40,000 
feet. That the subsidence was quiet and un- 
marked by violent movement is attested by the 
regularity of strata, especially of the carbonifer- 
ous measures, which alone show a sinking of 3,000 
or 4,000 feet. Neither were the disturbances 
which followed violent, nor were the changes par- 
oxysmal. Indeed, the probability is that they 
took place gradually through long periods of time. 
They were, nevertheless, productive of enormous 
results in the shape of hills, peaks, and mountain 
ranges. These movements in the earth's crust 
were due, as always, to contractions in the earth's 
body or reductions in its bulk. On the same 
principle by which the skin of an apple that has 
dried without decay is thrown into folds and 



HOW THE COAL BEDS LIE. 25 

wrinkles, the earth's crust became corrugated. 
There is this difference, however : the crust, being 
hard and unyielding, has often been torn and 
broken in the process of change. Naturally 
these ridges in the earth's surface have been 
lifted alons: the lines of least resistance, and these 
lines seem to have been, at the time of the Ap- 
palachian revolution, practically parallel to the 
line of the Atlantic coast, though long spurs were 
thrown out in other directions, isolated dome- 
shaped elevations were raised up, and bowl- 
shaped valleys were hollowed out among the hills. 
The anthracite coal beds were in the regions of 
greatest disturbance, and, together with the rock 
strata above and below them, assumed new posi- 
tions, which were inclined at all angles to their 
old ones of horizontality. More than this, the 
heat and pressure of that period exerted upon 
these beds of coal, which up to this time had been 
bituminous in character, resulted in the expulsion 
of so large a portion of the volatile matter still 
remaining in them as to change their character 
from bituminous to anthracite. Although the 
strata, in the positions to which they have been 
forced, are at times broken and abrupt, yet as a 
rule they rise and fall in wave-like folds or ridges. 
These ridges are called anticlinal s, because the 
strata slope in opposite directions from a common 
plane. The valleys between the ridges are called 
synclinals^ because the strata slope from opposite 



26 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

directions toward a common plane. One result 
of this great force of compression exerted on the 
earth's crust was to make rents in it across the 
lines of strata. These rents are called fissures. 
Sometimes the faces of a fissure are parallel and 
sometimes they inclose a wedge-shaped cavity. 
This cavity, whatever its shape, is usually filled 
either with igneous rock that has come up from 
the molten mass below, or with surface drift or 
broken rock fragments that have been deposited 
there from above. Where there is displacement 
as well as fracture, that is when the strata on one 
side of a fissure have been pushed up or have 
fallen below the corresponding strata on the other 
side, we have what is known as a fault. Some- 
times the displacement seems to have been ac- 
complished with little disturbance to the sides of 
the fissure ; at other times we find, along the line 
of fracture, evidences of great destruction caused 
by the pushing up of strata in this way. A fault 
may reach a comparatively short distance, or it 
may traverse a country for miles. The vertical 
displacement may be only a few inches, or it may 
amount to hundreds or thousands of feet. In 
the bituminous coal regions, where the strata lie 
comparatively undisturbed, faults are but little 
known. In the anthracite districts they are com- 
mon, but not great. 

Besides the great folds into which the earth's 
crust was crowded, there are usually smaller folds 




VERTICAL SECTION THROUGH SOUTHERN COAL FIELD. 




VERTICAL SECTION THROUGH NORTHERN COAL FIELD. 



HOW THE COAL BEDS LIE. 27 

corrugating the slopes of the greater ones, some- 
times running parallel with them, oftener stretch- 
ing across them at various angles. A marked 
instance of this formation is found in the Wyo- 
ming coal basin, the general coal bed of which is in 
the shape of a canoe, about fifty miles long, from 
two to six miles broad, and with a maximum 
depth of perhaps one thousand feet. Running 
diagonally across this basin, in practically parallel 
lines from one extremity to the other, is a series 
of gentle anticlinals, dividing the basin into some 
thirty smaller synclinal valleys or sub-basins. 

The irregularities produced by folds, fissures, 
faults, and partings are not the only ones with 
which the miner has to deal. So far we have sup- 
posed the coal seams to have been laid down in hori- 
zontal layers of uniform thickness, with smooth and 
regular under and upper surfaces. This is true 
only in a large sense. As a matter of fact each 
separate seam varies greatly in thickness, and its 
roof and floor are often broken and irregular. The 
beds of clay on which the deposits were laid were 
pushed up unevenly by the exuberant growth of 
vegetation from them. The action of waves and 
ocean currents made hollows in them, and laid down 
ridges and mounds of sand on them, around and 
over which the decaying vegetation rose and hard- 
ened. The same forces, together with the action 
of running streams, made channels and hollows in 
the upper surfaces of these beds of incipient coal, 



28 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

which cavities became filled by sand and gravel, 
and this also hardened into rock. These irregu- 
larities are found by the miner of to-day in the floor 
and roof of the coal seam, and are called rolls, 
horses, or horse-backs. When the coal seam thins 
out so rapidly that the floor and roof come nearly 
together, this state of things is called a pinch, or 
squeeze, though the latter term is more properly 
applied to the settling of the roof rock after the 
coal has been mined out. The inequalities of a 
coal seam that have now been mentioned, although 
perhaps but a small portion of those that are daily 
met with in the process of mining, are neverthless 
characteristic of the whole. 

The hills and mountain ranges that were thrown 
up at the close of the Carboniferous age were 
many times higher and broader then than they are 
to-day. Heat and cold and the storms of a thou- 
sand centuries, working by disintegration and ero- 
sion, have worn away their substance, the valleys 
and low lands are filled with it, and the rivers are 
always carrying it down to the sea. The peaks and 
the crests have been the portions of the elevations 
that have suffered most. It is often as though the 
tops of the anticlinal folds had been sliced off for 
the purpose of filling the valleys with them to the 
level of the decapitated hills. A great part of the 
coal measures have thus wasted away ; in some 
portions of the anthracite district by far the 
greater part, including many valuable coal seams. 



HOW THE COAL BEDS LIE. 29 

When a fold or flexure of the earth's crust has 
been decapitated in the manner mentioned, the ex- 
posed edge of any stratum of rock or coal is called 
its outcrop, The angle of inclination at which any 
stratum descends into the earth is called its dip. 
The direction of a horizontal line drawn along the 
face of a stratum of rock or coal is its strike. It 
is obvious that the strike must always be at right 
angles to the dip. That is, if the dip is downward 
toward the east or toward the west, the direction 
of the strike must be north and south. It is 
now apparent that if one begins at the outcrop of 
a coal seam and traces the course of the seam 
downward along the line of dip, his path will lie 
down the inclination for a longer or shorter dis- 
tance, until the bottom of the synclinal valley is 
reached. This is known as the basin or swamp. 
Here the seam may be comparatively level for a 
short distance ; more often it has a mild vertical 
curve, and starts up the dip on the other side of 
the valley, which inclination may be followed till 
the outcrop is reached. If now the decapitated 
portion of the fold could be replaced in its natural 
position, we could trace the same seam up to and 
over the anticlinal axis and down upon the other 
side. As it is, we must cross on the surface from 
the outcrop to the place where the corresponding 
seam enters the earth. In the southern and 
eastern anthracite coal districts of Pennsylvania 
decapitation of folds to a point below the coal 



30 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

measures is general ; the coal seams dip into the 
earth with a very sharp pitch, and the coal basins 
are often very deep and very narrow, striking into 
the earth almost like a wedge. In the northern 
or Wyoming district decapitation is not so gen- 
eral, the angle of inclination of strata is mild, and 
the basins are wide and comparatively shallow, 
j In the bituminous districts, where the disturbance 
to the earth's crust has been slight, the coal beds 
lie very nearly as they were formed, the dip seldom 
exceeding an angle of five degrees with the hori- 
zon. The exposures here are due generally to the 
erosive action of water. 

The carboniferous measures are the highest 
and latest geological formation in the great coal 
fields of the United States. Therefore where the 
strata have not been disturbed by flexure the coal 
seams lie near the surface. This is generally the 
case in the bituminous districts, and it is also par- 
tially true in the northern anthracite coal field. 
Deep mining is necessary only in the middle and 
southern anthracite coal fields, where the folds are 
close and precipitous, and the deep and narrow 
basins formed by them have been filled with de- 
posits of a later geologic age. 

Some of the difficulties to be met and overcome 
in mining coal will by this time have been appre- 
ciated by the reader. But some of them only. 
The inequalities of roof and floor, the pitching 
seams, the folds and faults and fissures, all the 




LLi 

O 



o 

Z 



CD 

z 



HOW THE COAL BEDS LIE. 31 

accidents and irregularities of formation and of 
location, makeup but, a few of the problems which 
face the mining: engineer. But the intellect and 
ingenuity of men have overcome most of the 
obstacles which Nature placed in the way of suc- 
cessful mining when she hardened the rocks above 
her coal beds, crowded the earth's crust into folds, 
and lifted the mountain ranges into the air. 

It will not be out of place at this time to make 
mentiou of those localities in w T hich coal is found. 
Indeed, there are few countries on the globe in 
which there are not carboniferous deposits of 
greater or less extent. Great Britain, with Ire- 
land, has about 12,000 square miles of them. In 
England alone there is an area of 8,139 square 
miles of workable coal beds. In continental 
Europe the coal fields are numerous, but the char- 
acter of the deposit is inferior. Coal is found 
also in the Asiatic countries, in Australia, and in 
South America; and in Nova Scotia and New 
Brunswick there is an area of 18,000 square miles 
of coal measures. The combined areas of coal 
measures in the United States amount to about 
185,000 square miles. The Appalachian or Alle- 
ghany region contains about 60,000 square miles, 
included in the States of Pennsylvania, Virginia, 
West Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, Kentucky, Ten- 
nessee, Georgia, and Alabama. The Illinois and 
Missouri region contains also about 60,000 square 
miles, and has areas not only in the States named, 



32 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

but also in Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Kansas, and 
Arkansas. Michigan lias about 5,000 and Rhode 
Island about 500 square miles. There are also 
small areas in Utah and Texas, and in the far 
West there are workable coal fields in Colorado, 
Dakota, Indian Territory, Montana, New Mexico, 
Washington, Wyoming Territory, Oregon, and 
California. The entire coal area of the United 
States, with the exception of that in Rhode Isl- 
and and a few outlying sections in Pennsylvania, 
contains coal of the bituminous variety only. 
Both the area and supply are therefore practi- 
cally without limit. In the coal regions of Rhode 
Island the disturbances affecting the earth's 
crust have been very violent. The motion, heat, 
and compression have been so great as to give 
the rocks associated with the coal measures a 
true metamorphic or crystalline structure, and to 
transform the coal itself into an extremely hard 
anthracite ; in some places, indeed, it has been 
altered to graphite. The flexures of the coal 
formation are very abrupt and full of faults, and 
the coal itself is greatly broken and displaced. 
Its condition is such that it cannot be mined with 
great profit, and but little of it is now sent to 
market. The only areas of readily workable an- 
thracite in the United States are therefore in Penn- 
sylvania. These are all east of the Alleghany 
Mountains, and are located in four distinct regions. 
^ The first or Southern Coal Field extends from the 



HOW THE COAL BEDS LIE. 33 

Lehigh Rive r at Mauch Chunk, southwest to 
within a few miles of the Susquehanna River, end- 
ing at this extremity in the form of a fish's tail. 
It is seventy-five miles in length, averages some- 
what less than two miles in breadth, and has an 
area of one hundred and forty square miles. It 
lies in Carbon, Schuylkill, and Dauphin counties. 
The second or Western Middle field, known also as 
the Mahanoy and Shamokin field, lies between the 
eastern headwaters of the Little Schuylkill River 
and the Susquehanna River. It has an area of 
about ninety square miles, and is situated in the 
counties of Schuylkill, Columbia, and Northum- 
berland. It lies just north of the Southern field, 
and the two together are frequently spoken of as 
the Schuylkill Region. The Eastern Middle or 
Upper Lehigh field lies northeast of the first two 
fields, and is separated into nine distinct parallel 
canoe-shaped basins. These extend from the Le- 
high River on the east to the Catawissa Creek on 
the west, and comprise an area of about forty 
miles. They are principally in Luzerne County, 
but extend also into Carbon, Schuylkill, and 
Columbia counties. The Northern or Wyoming 
field is a crescent-shaped basin about fifty miles 
long and from two to six miles broad, with an area 
of about two hundred square miles. Its westerly 
cusp is just north of the Eastern Middle field, and 
it extends from that point northeasterly through 
Luzerne and Lackawanna counties, just cutting 



34 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

into Wayne and Susquehanna counties with its 
northern cusp. It lies in the valleys of the Susque- 
hanna and Lackawanna rivers, and in it are situ- 
ated the mining towns of Plymouth, Wilkes Barre, 
Pittston, Scranton, and Carbondale. There is 
also a fifth district, known as the Loyalsock and 
Mehoopany coal field, lying in Sullivan and Wy- 
oming counties. It is from twenty to twenty-five 
miles northwest of the Wyoming and Lacka- 
wanna field, its area is limited, and its coals are 
not true anthracite. 

It will thus be seen that aside from this last 
field the anthracite coal area of Pennsylvania 
contains about four hundred and seventy square 
miles. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE DISCOVERY OF COAL. 

Although it lias been within comparatively 
recent times that coal has come into general use 
as a fuel, yet there can be no doubt that it was 
discovered, and that its qualities were known, 
many centuries ago. To prove its use by the 
ancients, mention is sometimes made of a passage 
from the writings of Theophrastus, a pupil and 
friend of Aristotle and for many years the head 
of the peripatetic school of philosophy. This 
passage dates back to about 300 B. c, and is as 
follows : " Those substances that are called coals 
and are broken for use are earthy, but they kindle 
and burn like wooden coals. They are found in 
Liguria where there is amber, and in Elis over 
the mountains toward Olympus. They are used 
by the smiths." 

The word "coal," however, as used in the Bible 
and other ancient books, usually means charcoal, 
or burning wood. It is claimed, and not without 
plausibility, that coal was mined in Britain prior 
to the Roman invasion. The cinder heaps found 
among ruins of the time of Roman supremacy in 
the island point to quite an extensive use of coal 



36 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

by the people of that age. But no writings have 
been found recording the use of coal prior to 
852 A. D. In that year twelve cartloads of 
"fossil fuel," or "pit coal," were received by the 
abbey of Peterborough in England, and the re- 
ceipt was recorded. It is said that coal first 
began to be systematically mined in Great Britain 
about the year 1180. 

It is certain that by the end of the thirteenth 
century the exportation of coal from Newcastle 
was considerable, and the new fuel had come to 
be largely used in London. But the people of 
that city conceived the idea that its use was inju- 
rious to the health of the inhabitants generally. 
The coal, being of the bituminous variety, burned 
with considerable flame and gave off a good deal 
of smoke, and the ignorance of the people led 
them into the belief that the air was contami- 
nated and poisoned by the products of combus- 
tion. So they presented a petition to Parliament 
asking that the burning of coal be prohibited in 
the city of London. Not only was the prayer of 
the petitioners granted, but in order to render the 
prohibition effectual an act was passed making 
it a capital offense to burn the dreaded fuel. This 
was in the reign of Edward I., and is characteris- 
tic of the policy of that strong, unyielding king, 
whose ends, great and just perhaps, were too often 
attained by harsh and cruel means. 

The coal industry was checked, but it was not 



THE DISCOVERY OF COAL. 37 

•destroyed ; for, half a century later, we find Edward 
III. granting a license to the inhabitants of New- 
castle " to dig coals and stones in the common 
soil of the town without the walls thereof in the 
place called the Castle Field and the Forth." 
Afterward this town, owing to the fine coal beds 
in its vicinity, became one of the great centres of 
the British coal trade, from which fact doubtless 
arose that ancient saying concerning useless 
trouble or labor, that it is like " carrying coals to 
Newcastle." 

In Scotland coal was mined in the twelfth cen- 
tury and in Germany in the thirteenth, and the 
Chinese had already become familiar with its use. 
But in Paris the same prejudice was excited 
against it that had prevailed in London, and it 
did not come into use in that city as a household 
fuel until about the middle of the sixteenth cen- 
tury. This was also the date of its introduction 
into Wales, Belgium, and other European coun- 
tries. 

That coal was familiar, in appearance at least, 
to the natives of America, long before the feet 
of white men ever pressed American soil, cannot 
well be doubted. They must have seen it at its 
numerous outcrops ; perhaps they took pieces of 
it in their hard hands, handled it, broke it, pow- 
dered it, or cast it away from them as useless. 
Indeed, it is not improbable that they should have 
known something of its qualities as a fuel. But 



38 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

of this there is no proof. The first record we 
have of the observation of coal in this country 
was made by Father Hennepin, a French explorer, 
in 1679. On a map of his explorations he marked 
the site of a coal mine on the bank of the Illi- 
nois River above Fort Crevecoeur, near the pres- 
ent town of Ottawa. In his record of travel he 
states that in the country then occupied by the 
Pimitoui or Pimitwi Indians " there are mines of 
coal, slate, and iron." The oldest coal workings 
in America are doubtless those in what is known 
as the Richmond or Chesterfield coal bed, near 
Richmond in Chesterfield and Powhatan counties 
in the State of Virginia. It is supposed that 
coal was discovered and mined there as early as 
1750. But by whom and under what circum- 
stances the discovery was made we have only 
tradition to inform us. This says that one day, 
during the year last named, a certain boy, living 
in that vicinity, went out into an unfrequented 
district on a private and personal fishing excur- 
sion. Either the fish bit better than he had 
thought they would, or for some other cause his 
supply of bait ran out, and it became necessary 
for him to renew it. Hunting around in the 
small creeks and inlets for crawfish with which 
to bait his hook, he chanced to stumble upon the 
outcrop of a coal bed which crosses the James 
River about twelve miles above Richmond. He 
made his discovery known, and further examiua- 



TEE DISCOVERY OF COAL. 39 

tion disclosed a seam of rich bituminous coal, 
which has since been conceded to be a formation 
of Mesozoic time rather than of the Carboniferous 
age. Mining operations were soon begun, and 
were carried on so successfully that by the year 
1775 the coal was in general use in the vicinity 
for smithing and domestic purposes. It played 
a part in the war for independence by entering 
into the manufacture of cannon bails, and by 
1789 it had achieved so much of a reputation 
that it was being shipped to Philadelphia, New 
York, and Boston, and sold in those markets. 
But the mines were operated by slave labor, and 
mining was carried on in the most primitive fash- 
ion for three quarters of a century. So. late as 
1880 the improved systems of mining, long in use 
in the North, were still comparatively unknown 
at the Virginia mines. 

During the war of the rebellion these mines 
were seized by the Confederate government and 
operated by it, in order to obtain directly the nec- 
essary fuel for purposes of modern warfare ; and 
upon the cessation of hostilities the paralysis 
which had fallen upon all other Southern indus- 
tries fell also upon this. But with the revival 
of business, mining was again begun in the Rich- 
mond field, and from 1874 to the present time 
the industry has prospered and grown, and Vir- 
ginia has furnished to the country at large a con- 
siderable amount of an excellent quality of bitu- 



40 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

minous coal. This coal bed covers an area of 
about 180 square miles, and lias an average thick- 
ness of twenty-four feet. It is supposed to con- 
tain about 50,000,000 of tons yet unmine d. 

Another of the early discoveries of coal in the 
United States was that of the Rhode Island 
anthracite bed in 1760. Mines began to be regu- 
larly worked here in 1808, but only about 750,- 
000 tons, all told, have been taken from them. 
For reasons which have been already given these 
mines cannot be profitably worked in competition 
with the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania, in 
which the location and formation of the coal beds 
are greatly superior. 

It is impossible to say when the coal of the 
great bituminous district of Pennsylvania and 
Ohio was first seen by white men. In the sum- 
mer of 1755 General Braddock led his army 
through western Pennsylvania by a military road 
to that terrible defeat and slaughter in which he 
himself received his death wound. This road, 
laid out by the army's engineers and graded by its 
men, was so well built that its course can still be 
traced, and it is seen to have crossed the outcrop 
of the Pittsburgh coal seam in many places. It 
is not improbable that a large number of the sol- 
diers in the English army were familiar with the 
appearance of coal, and knew how to mine it and 
use it. Indeed, Colonel James Burd, who was 
engaged in the construction of the road, claims to 



THE DISCOVERY OF COAL. 41 

have burned about a bushel of this coal on his 
camp-fire at that time. 

Some of the English soldiers who survived that 
terrible disaster to their arms afterward returned 
and purchased lands in the vicinity, and it is rea- 
sonable to suppose that the coal was dug and put 
to use by them. A lease, still in existence, dated 
April 11, 1767, making a grant of lands on " Coal 
Pitt Creek," in Westmoreland County, indicates 
that there were coal openings there at that date. 
Captain Thomas Hutchins, who visited Fort Pitt 
(now Pittsburgh) in 1760, mentions the fact that 
he found an open coal mine on the opposite side 
of the Monongahela River, from which coal was 
being taken for the use of the garrison. 

From 1770 to 1777 it was common for maps of 
certain portions of the Ohio River country to have 
marked on them sites of coal beds along the shores 
of that stream in regions which are now known to 
contain seams of the great bituminous deposit. 

Probably the Susquehanna River region was the 
first in which this coal was dug systematically and 
put to use. It was burned by blacksmiths in their 
forges, and as early as 1785 the river towns were 
supplied with it by Samuel Boyd, who shipped it 
from his mines in arks. In 1813 Philip Karthaus 
took a quantity of coal to Fort Deposit, and sent 
it thence by canal to Philadelphia. After this he 
sent cargoes regularly to Philadelphia and Balti- 
more, and sold them readily at the rate of thirty- 



42 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

three cents per bushel. This trade was stopped, 
however, by the building of dams across the Sus- 
quehanna, and it was not until many years after- 
ward that the mineral resources of this section of 
the coal field were developed again through the 
introduction of railroads. 

In the Pittsburgh region the demand for coal 
increased with the increase of population, and at 
the beginning of the present century it was in 
general use, not only in the manufacturing indus- 
tries but also as a domestic fuel, throughout that 
section of country. The first coal sent from Pitts- 
burgh to an eastern market was shipped to Phila- 
delphia in 1803. It was carried by the Louisiana, 
a boat of 350 tons burden, and was sold at the 
rate of thirty-seven and a half cents per bushel. 
From that time the increase in the mining of bitu- 
minous coal in the Pittsburgh region has been 
steady and enormous. Its presence, its quality 
and abundance, have induced the establishment of 
great manufacturing enterprises in that section of 
the State, and many millions of tons of it are sent 
every year to the markets of the seaboard. 

Pennsylvania was a region much in favor with 
the North American Indians, and it is more than 
probable that they were aware, to some extent, of 
the existence of mineral wealth beneath her soil, 
long before white men ever came among them. 

Besides the numerous outcroppings of coal 
which, in their journeyings, they must have 



TEE DISCOVERY OF COAL. 43 

crossed and recrossed for centuries, there were 
many places where the coal seams, having been 
cut through by creeks and rivers, were exposed 
fully to view. In this way, in the Wyoming 
district, the seven feet vein along the Nanticoke 
Creek had been disclosed, and the nine feet vein 
on Ransom's Creek at Plymouth ; while at Pitts- 
ton the Susquehanna River had bared the coal 
seams in the faces of its rocky banks, and up the 
Lackawanna the black strata were frequently 
visible. But whatever knowledge the Indians had 
on the subject was, with proverbial reticence, kept 
to themselves. It is said that about the year 
1750 a party of Indians brought a bag of coal to 
a gunsmith living near Nazareth in Pennsylvania, 
but refused to say where they had obtained it. 
The gunsmith burned it successfully in the forge 
which he used for the purpose of repairing their 
guns. 

The presumption that the Indians knew some- 
thing of the uses of coal, and actually mined it, is 
borne out by the following incident : In the year 
1766 a trader by the name of John Anderson was 
settled at Wyoming, and carried on a small busi- 
ness as a shopkeeper, trading largely with the red 
men. In September of that year a company of 
six Nanticoke, Conoy, and Mohican Indians visited 
the governor at Philadelphia, and made to him 
the following address : — 

" Brother, — As we came down from Chenango 



44 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

we stopped at Wyoming, where we had a mine in 
two places, and we discovered that some white 
people had been at work in the mine, and had 
filled three canoes with the ore ; and we saw their 
tools with which they had dug it out of the ground, 
where they had made a hole at least forty feet 
long and five or six feet deep. It happened for- 
merly that some white people did take, now and 
then, only a small bit and carry it away, but these 
people have been working at the mine, and have 
filled their canoes. We desire that you will tell 
us whether you know anything of this matter, or 
if it be done by your consent. We inform you 
that there is one John Anderson, a trader, now 
living at Wyoming, and we suspect that he, or 
somebody by him, has robbed our mine. This 
man has a store of goods there, and it may happen 
when the Indians see their mine robbed they will 
come and take away his goods." 

There is little doubt that the mines referred to 
were coal mines. The presence of coal on the 
same side of the river a few miles below Wyoming 
was certainly known, if not at that time then very 
soon afterward ; for in 1768 Charles Stewart 
made a survey of the Manor of Sunbury opposite 
Wilkes Barre for the "Proprietaries'" govern- 
ment, and on the original map of the survey 
" stone coal " is noted as appearing on the site of 
what is now called Rosshill. , 

This valley of Wyoming, the seat of such vast 



THE DISCOVERY OF COAL. 45 

mineral wealth, was first settled by people from 
Connecticut in 1762, and in the fall of that year 
they reported the discovery of coal. 

These energetic, enterprising Yankee settlers 
could not fail to know the location of the coal 
beds before they had been long in the valley. 
Some of them were probably familiar with the 
English bituminous coals, which were then being 
exported in small quantities to America under the 
name of " sea coal ; " and from the fact that our 
anthracite was known to them as " stone coal " 
it is probable that there were those among them 
who knew that the English people had a very 
hard coal which they could not burn, and to which 
they had given the name " stone coal." Speci- 
mens of this Wyoming valley stone coal had al- 
ready been gathered and sent to England for ex- 
amination. Indeed, there is no doubt that the first 
anthracite coal ever found by white men in the 
United States was discovered in this valley. But 
these Yankee settlers could not make their stone 
coal burn. Repeated trials met with repeated 
failures. There was one among them, however, 
Obadiah Gore, a blacksmith, who would not be 
discouraged. In 1769 he took a quantity of these 
coals to the blacksmith's shop conducted by him 
and his brother, put them in his forge, and contin- 
ued his efforts and experiments until finally the 
black lumps yielded to his persistency, and he had 
the satisfaction of seeing the blue flames dart 



46 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

from them, and the red color creep over them, 
and of feeling the intense heat sent out by their 
combustion. But their ignition and burning were 
dependent upon the strong air current sent 
through them by the bellows ; without that he 
could do nothing with them. 

So this Yankee blacksmith, who was afterwards 
one of the associate judges of the courts of Lu- 
zerne County, became, so far as is known, the first 
white man to demonstrate practically the value 
of anthracite coal as a fuel. The success of 
Gore's experiments soon became known, other 
smiths began to recognize the merits of the lately 
despised stone coal, and it was not long before the 
forge fires of nearly every smithy in the region 
were ablaze with anthracite. 

The fame of the new fuel soon spread beyond 
the limits of the valley, and if the difficulties of 
transportation checked its use elsewhere, the 
knowledge of how to use it in forges and furnaces 
was not uncommon. The demand for it over- 
came, at times, even the obstacles in the way of 
shipment, and it was sent to points at long dis- 
tances from the mines. 

In 1776 the proprietary government of Penn- 
sylvania had an armory at Carlisle in that State, 
in which they were manufacturing firearms to be 
used by the Continental troops in the war with 
Great Britain ; and the first coal ever sent out 
from the Wyoming valley was shipped by them 



THE DISCOVERY OF COAL 47 

to Carlisle during that year and the succeeding 
years of the war, for use in their armory. 

The next discoveries of anthracite were made 
in what is now know as the Southern coal field. 
It had long been a matter of tradition among the 
stolid German farmers of Pennsylvania that coal 
existed in the rugged hills along the Lehigh Kiver, 
but no one succeeded in finding it there until 
the year 1791. It was then discovered by one 
Philip Ginther, a hunter and backwoodsman, who 
who had built a rough cabin in the forest near the 
Mauch Chunk mountain, and there gave to himself 
and his family a precarious support by killing 
game, large and small, carrying it to the nearest 
settlement, and exchanging it at the village store 
for the necessaries of life. Telling the story 
afterward, himself, he said that at one time the 
supply of food in his cabin chanced to run out, 
and he started into the woods with his gun in quest 
of something which should satisfy the hunger of 
those who were at home. It was a most unsuccess- 
ful hunting expedition. The morning passed, the 
afternoon went by, night approached, but his game- 
bag was still empty. He was tired, hungry, and 
sadly disappointed. A drizzling rain set in as he 
started homeward across the Mauch Chunk moun- 
tain, darkness was coming rapidly on, and de- 
spondency filled his mind as he thought of the 
expectant faces of little ones at home to whom 
he was returning empty-handed. Making his way 



48 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

slowly through the thick, wet undergrowth, and 
still looking about him, if perchance something 
in the way of game might yet come within the 
range of his gun, his foot happened to strike a 
hard substance which rolled away before him. He 
looked down at it, and then bent over and picked 
it up, and saw by the deepening twilight that it 
was black. He was familiar with the traditions 
of the country concerning the existence of stone 
coal in this region, and he began to wonder if 
this, indeed, was not a specimen of it. He car- 
ried the black lump home with him that night, 
and the next day he set out with it to find Colo- 
nel Jacob Weiss at Fort Allen, now Weissport, 
to whom he exhibited what he had found. Colo- 
nel Weiss became deeply interested in the mat- 
ter, and brought the specimen to Philadelphia, 
where he submitted it to the inspection of John 
Nicholson, Michael Hillegas, and Charles Cist. 
These men, after assuring themselves that it was 
really anthracite coal, authorized Colonel Weiss 
to make such a contract with Ginther as would 
induce him to point out the exact spot where the 
mineral was found. It happened that the hunter 
coveted a vacant piece of land in the vicinity 
containing a fine water-power and mill -site, and 
on Colonel Weiss agreeing to obtain a patent for 
him from the State for the desired lot of land, 
he very readily gave all the information in his 
possession concerning the " stone coal." 



THE DISCOVERY OF COAL. 49 

In the Potts ville district of the Southern an- 
thracite region coal was discovered at about the 
same time as in the Mauch Chunk field. This 
discovery too was made by accident, and the dis- 
coverer in this case also was a hunter, Nicholas 
Allen. He had been out with his gun all day, 
and at nightfall had found himself too far away 
from his home to make the attempt to reach it. 
He accordingly built a fire under a projecting 
ledge at the foot of Broad Mountain, and, lying 
down by it, soon fell asleep. He was wakened in 
the night by a strong light shining on his eyes, 
and by the sensation of great heat. Springing 
to his feet, he discovered that the ledge itself was 
burning, or, as he afterward expressed it, " that 
the mountain was on fire." He could not under- 
stand the phenomenon, and remained in the vicin- 
ity until morning, when he saw, by daylight, that 
what he had thought to be a ledge of rocks was 
really a projecting outcrop of mineral coal, which 
had become ignited from his camp-fire of sticks. 
Whether this story is or is not authentic, it is cer- 
tain that no practical results attended the discovery 
of coal in this region. It was not until twenty- 
six years after Obadiah Gore's experiments in the 
Wyoming valley that coal was successfully burned 
here in a blacksmith's forge. The attempt was 
made by one Whetstone, and met with the same 
marked success that had attended the earlier 
effort. But owing to the difficulty still generally 



50 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

experienced in combustion, the coal of this region 
was not generally used until after the year 1806. 
In that year David Berlin, another blacksmith, 
experimented with it in his forge, with such com- 
plete success that a new impetus was given to the 
coal trade, mining was resumed, and the new fuel 
came into general use in the blacksmiths' shops 
of the vicinity. 

In the Middle anthracite district coal was not 
discovered until 1826. This discovery also was 
made by a hunter, John Charles. On one of his 
hunting expeditions he chanced to find a ground- 
hog's hole, and, laying down his rifle, he began to 
dig for his game. In the course of the excava- 
tion he uncovered a projecting shelf of stone coal. 
He made his discovery known, further explorations 
were set on foot, the coal bed was located, and a 
company called the Hazleton Coal Company was 
formed to work the field. 

From these several points of discovery the 
search for anthracite coal was extended in all di- 
rections, the limits of the beds were eventually 
defined, and each field was surveyed and mapped 
with much care. 



CHAPTER Vie 

THE INTRODUCTION OF COAL INTO USE. 

At the beginning of the present century the 
anthracite or stone coal was in general use, in all 
the districts where it was found, as a fuel for the 
blacksmith's fire and the iron worker's forge. 
This, however, was the limit of its utility. It was 
thought to be necessary to force a strong artificial 
air current up through it to make it burn, and since 
this could not well be done in grates, stoves, or fur- 
naces, there was no demand for coal for domestic 
use, or for the great manufacturing industries. 
Efforts were indeed made to overcome this diffi- 
culty. Schemes without number were set on foot 
and abandoned. It was proposed, at one time, 
to force air through a tube to the under part of 
the grate by means of clockwork operated by a 
weight or by a spring. But the cost of such an 
arrangement made it impracticable. 

It seems, however, that Weiss, Cist, and Hillegas, 
who were developing the discovery made by Gin- 
ther in the Mauch Chunk mountain, also solved 
the problem of burning the stone coal without 
an artificial draft. They had sent specimens of 
their coals to Philadelphia, and presumably had 



52 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

accompanied them with instructions as to the 
proper method of burning them. This presump- 
tion is borne out by certain letters sent to Jacob 
Cist of Wilkes Barre, a son of Charles Cist the 
printer, who was in company with Weiss and 
Hillegas. Two of these letters are now in the 
possession of the Wyoming Historical and Geolog- 
ical Society at Wilkes Barre. An extract from 
one of them reads as follows : — - 

" I have experienced the use of them " (the 
Lehigh coals) " in a close stove and also in a fire- 
place that may be closed and opened at pleasure, 
so constructed, as to cause a brisk current of air 
to pass up through a small contracted grate on 
which they were laid. I find them more difficult 
to be kindled than the Virginia coal, yet a small 
quantity of dry wood laid on the grate under 
them is sufficient to ignite them, which being 
done, they continue to burn while a sufficient 
amount be added to keep up the combustion, occa- 
sionally stirring them to keep down the ashes. 
They produce no smoke, contain no sulphur, and 
when well ignited exhibit a vivid bright appear- 
ance, all which render them suitable for warming 
rooms." 

This letter is dated " Philadelphia, Feb. 15 th 
1803," and is signed " Oliver Evans." 

The second letter is similar in its recommen- 
dation and report of success, and states that the 
writer, " Fred k Graff, clerk of the Water 



INTRODUCTION OF COAL INTO USE. 53 

Works of Phil a . . . made a trial of the Lehigh 
coals in the year 1802 in the large stove at the 
Pennsylvania Bank in Phil a ." 

So far as is known these are the first recorded 
instances of any successful attempts to burn an- 
thracite coal in grates and stoves. Dr. James of 
Philadelphia has also left on record the fact that 
he made constant use of anthracite coal for heat- 
ing purposes from the year 1804. 

These well-authenticated instances of the use 
of anthracite appear to destroy the commonly 
accepted belief that Judge Jesse Fell of Wilkes 
Barre was the first person whose attempts to burn 
this coal in an open grate were rewarded with 
complete success. Nevertheless the value of 
Judge Fell's experiments cannot be questioned, 
nor can he be deprived of the full measure of 
credit due to him for bringing those experiments 
to a successful issue. 

Until the year 1808 all efforts in the Wyoming 
valley to burn the " stone coal " of the region with- 
without an artificial air blast had utterly failed. 
People did not believe that it could be done. The 
successes of Evans and Graff in this direction 
were either not known or not credited. It is 
certain that Judge Fell had not heard of them. 
His opinion that this coal could be made to burn 
in an open fireplace was based wholly on the 
reasoning of his own mind. He was a member of 
the Society of Friends, and had come to Wilkes 



54 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

Barre some years before from Berks County. He 
was a blacksmith by trade, the proprietor of the 
besc hotel in town, and he came afterward to be 
one of the associate judges of Luzerne County. 
When he had fully considered the matter of burn- 
ing the stone coal, and had reached definite con- 
clusions, he began to experiment. At first he 
constructed a grate of green hickory sticks, and 
the presumption is that the fire he kindled in it 
was a success; for he began, immediately after- 
ward, to make an iron grate similar to the grates 
now in use. The work was done by his nephew 
Edward Fell and himself in the blacksmith shop 
of the former, &nd was completed in a single day. 
Judge Fell took the grate home late in the after- 
noon and set it with brick in the fireplace of his 
bar-room. In the evening he kindled in it, with 
oak wood, a glowing coal fire, and invited a large 
number of the most respected citizens of the 
place to come in and see the stone coal burn. 
Only a few came, however, in response to his in- 
vitation ; they believed his theory to be impractica- 
ble, and feared that they might be made the vic- 
tims of a hoax. But to those who came the fire 
was a revelation. It cleared the way for immense 
possibilities. Judge Fell himself realized the im- 
portance of his discovery, and thought the incident 
worthy of record. Being a devoted member of 
the order of Free and Accepted Masons, he chose 
from his library a book entitled " The Free Ma- 



INTRODUCTION OF COAL INTO USE. 55 

son's Monitor, 59 and wrote on the fly-leaf, in a 
clear, bold hand, this memorandum : — 

" Fe'b 11 th , of Masonry 5808, Made the ex- 
periment of burning the common stone coal of 
the valley in a grate in a common fire place in my 
house, and find it will answer the purpose of fuel ; 
making a clearer and better fire, at less expense, 
than burning wood in the common way. 

[Signed] Jesse Fell. 

"BOBOUGH OF WlLKESBAKRB^ 

February 11 th 1808." 

The complete success of Judge Fell's experi- 
ment was soon noised abroad, and a new era of use- 
fulness for anthracite coal set in. From Wilkes 
Barre up and down the entire Wyoming valley 
fireplaces for wood were discarded and grates were 
set for the burning of the new domestic fuel. 
This was followed, not long after, by the intro- 
duction of stoves, so that by 1820, says Stewart 
Pearce in his "Annals of Luzerne County," 
grates and coal stoves were in general use through- 
out the valley, coal for domestic purposes selling 
at three dollars per ton. At the time of Judge 
Fell's experiment there was no outside market for 
the product of the mines of the Wyoming valley. 
The distances to the large cities and manufactur- 
ing centres were too great, the means of trans- 
portation too rude, and the knowledge of the use 
of anthracite too limited, to warrant any serious 
effort to create a foreign market for it. The at- 



56 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

tempt had nevertheless been made in 1807 by 
Abijah Smith, who shipped an ark-load of coal 
down the Susquehanna River to Columbia, and 
was obliged to leave it there unsold. 

In 1808 the experiment was repeated by Abijah 
and his brother John, who, profiting by the suc- 
cess of Judge Fell's late experiment, took with 
them an iron grate, set it up at Columbia, and pro- 
ceeded to demonstrate to the doubting inhabitants 
the practical value of their coal as a domestic fuel. 
The venture proved successful, and after this they 
found no difficulty in selling at the river towns all 
the coal they could mine. After 1812 they ex- 
tended their trade by running their coal to Havre 
de Grace, and sending it thence by schooner to 
New York. 

The success which attended the efforts of the 
Smiths appears to have been an inducement to 
other enterprising citizens of the Wyoming val- 
ley to embark in the coal trade, and in 1813 and 
1814 Colonel George M. Hollenback, Colonel 
Lord Butler, Joseph Wrig^ht, Esq., and Crandal 
Wilcox all engaged in the mining and shipping 
of coal. They sent the product of the mines 
down the river in arks, and up to 1830 85,000 
tons had been mined in the valley for such ship- 
ment. After that year coal was sent by the 
North Branch Cana} just completed to Nantieoke, 
and in 1846 the Lehigh and Susquehanna Rail- 
road pierced the valley, and opened a new era in 



INTRODUCTION OF COAL INTO USE. 57 

transportation. So it came about that this region, 
which in 1807 opened the anthracite coal trade 
with a shipment of fifty-five tons, sent to market 
in 1887 a grand total of 19,684,929 tons. 

In the mean time Weiss, Cist, and Hillegas 
pushed their coal enterprise on the Mauch Chunk 
mountain, opening what was afterward known as 
the Great Summit Mine, and in 1808 started six 
ark-loads of coal down the Lehigh River, to be 
floated to its junction with the Delaware, and 
thence to Philadelphia. Only two of the arks 
reached their destination, the others having met 
with disaster on the w r ay, owing, to swift currents 
and unskillful navigation. Of the two cargoes 
that arrived safely at Philadelphia not a lump 
could be sold. The owners made strenuous efforts 
to find a market for it, but people did not wish 
to purchase a fuel that they could not make burn. 
At last the city authorities were appealed to, and, 
after some hesitation, they agreed to take the coal 
and try to make use of it for a steam-engine em- 
ployed at the city waterworks. This they did ; 
but all their attempts to make the alleged fuel 
burn proved unavailing. They finally gave up 
the task in disgust, declared the coal to be a nui- 
sance, and caused what remained of it to be 
broken up and spread on the footpaths of the 
public grounds, in place of gravel. This was in- 
deed a most ignominious failure. It caused a 
sudden cessation of mining operations at Summit 



58 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

Hill, and for several years the Lehigh Mine Com- 
pany, utterly discouraged, made no effort to re- 
trieve its fallen fortunes. William Turnbull at- 
tempted to revive the project a few years later, 
but his effort also met with a dismal failure. 

In 1813 Charles Miner, Jacob Cist, and John 
W. Robinson, all of Wilkes Barre, renewed the 
enterprise at Summit Hill with great energy, and 
on the 9th of August, 1814, started their first 
ark-load of coal down the river to Philadelphia. 
Before it had gone eighty rods from the place of 
starting it struck a ledge which tore a hole in the 
bow of the boat, " and," Mr. Miner says, " the 
lads stripped themselves nearly naked to stop the 
rush of water with their clothes." After many 
and varied adventures on the swift currents of the 
rivers the ark reached its destination on the fol- 
lowing Sunday morning at eight o'clock, having 
been five days on the way. Its arrival had been 
anticipated by its owners, and they had called 
public attention to its cargo by means of handbills 
printed in both English and German, and distrib- 
uted freely throughout the city. These handbills, 
besides advertising the coal, gave information as 
to the method of burning it in grates, stoves, and 
smith's forges. They were also accompanied by 
printed certificates from blacksmiths and others 
attesting the value and availability of the Lehigh 
coal as a fuel. The owners of the ark went still 
farther. They put up stoves in conspicuous public 



INTRODUCTION OF COAL INTO USE. 59 

places in the city, built coal fires in them, and in- 
vited the people to stop and inspect them. They 
went to private houses and prevailed on the in- 
mates to be allowed to kindle anthracite fires in 
the grates which had been built for the use of 
Liverpool coals. They attended at blacksmith's 
shops, and even bribed the journeymen to give 
their coals a fair trial in the forge. Thus, by 
persistent and industrious, nay by presumptuous, 
efforts, these men succeeded in awakening public 
interest in their enterprise, and in creating a de- 
mand for their wares. The proprietors of the 
Lehigh coals gave particular attention also to the 
instruction of the people in the matter of igniting 
the new fuel. Having once disabused them of 
the idea that a strong artificial air current was 
necessary, the next step was to prevent them from 
disturbing the coals constantly by poking, punch- 
ing, and raking them, a proceeding which the un- 
initiated seemed to consider of prime importance, 
in order to induce them to ignite. And, strange 
as it may seem, this fallacy was the hardest to 
overcome. Among the purchasers of the Lehigh 
coals in 1814 was the firm of White & Hazard, 
manufacturers of iron wire at the falls of the 
Schuylkill. They had been told by Mr. Joshua 
Malin, proprietor of a rolling mill, that he had suc- 
ceeded in using the new fuel, and as the Virginia 
coal was very scarce at that time, White & Haz- 
ard decided to test the qualities of the anthracite. 



60 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

They purchased a cart-load of it, paying a dollar 
a bushel for it, and took it to their works. Here 
they tried to build a fire with it in their furnace, 
giving it what they considered the most skillful 
manipulation and the most assiduous attention. 
Their efforts were in vain. The entire cart-load 
was wasted in a futile attempt to make the coals 
burn. Nothing daunted, they obtained another 
cartload, and determined to spend the night, if 
need should be, in the work of building a coal 
fire. And they did spend the night. But when 
morning came they were apparently as far from 
the attainment of their object as ever. They had 
poked and punched and raked ; they had labored 
incessantly ; but notwithstanding the most con- 
stant manipulation, the coals above the burning 
wood w r ould not sufficiently ignite. By this time 
the men were disheartened and disgusted, and 
slamming the door of the furnace, they left the 
mill in despair, and went to breakfast. . It hap- 
pened that one of them had left his jacket in the 
furnace room, and returning for it about half an 
hour later, he discovered that the furnace door was 
red-hot. In great surprise he flung the door open 
and found the interior glowing with intense white 
heat. The other hands were immediately sum- 
moned, and four separate parcels of iron were 
heated and rolled by the same fire before it re- 
quired renewing. Seeking for the cause of this 
unexpected result the men came to the conclusion 



INTRODUCTION OF COAL INTO USE. 61 

that it was due to simply letting the fire alone, a 
theory the correctness of which they afterward 
abundantly proved. Thus, by chance, these men 
hit upon the secret of success in the matter of 
building: a fire of anthracite coals. That secret is 
simply to throw the coals loosely on the burning 
wood, and then let them alone. The incident 
at White & Hazard's mills becoming generally 
known, people learned more from it about the 
process of building a coal fire than they had 
learned from all their previous instruction. 

Nevertheless the enterprise of the Lehigh oper- 
ators was still not destined to meet with success. 
They had embarked in the coal trade in 1814, while 
the war with Great Britain was still in progress, 
when it was impossible to procure coal from Eng- 
land, and when coal from the Richmond district 
was very scarce. They were therefore able to ob- 
tain fourteen dollars per ton for the Lehigh coal, 
but even at this price the cost and risk of mining 
and shipping was so great that the business was 
barely a paying one. In 1815, however, peace 
was concluded with Great Britain, the market was 
again opened to the reception of foreign coals, and 
the Lehigh operators, being unable to compete with 
the sellers of soft coal, were obliged to abandon 
the field. 

Notwithstanding the efforts and energy of these 
proprietors the Summit Hill mining industry did 
not pay, and in 1817 the mines passed into the 



62 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

hands of Josiah White and Erskine Hazard. 
They perfected a system of slack-water navigation 
on the Lehigh, and in 1820 made their first ship- 
ment of 365 tons. The tables commonly printed 
showing the growth of the anthracite coal trade 
usually make that trade begin with this shipment 
of Lehigh coal in 1820. This, however, is not 
quite correct, as we have seen that coal was sent to 
market from the Wyoming region at a much ear- 
lier date. It is remarkable that, whereas in 1820 
the 365 tons of Lehigh coal stocked the market, 
in 1831, the year in which the system of slack 
water navigation was superseded by shipment on 
the Delaware division of the Pennsylvania Canal, 
this region sent down 40,966 tons. And in 1887 
there was sent to market from the Lehigh district 
a total of 4,347,061 tons, an amount which would 
have been much greater had not a prolonged strike 
of coal miners seriously interfered with the out- 
put. 

In the Schuylkill region of the Southern coal 
field similar obstacles to the introduction of coal 
were encountered. Nicholas Allen, the discoverer 
of coal in that region, had formed a partnership 
with Colonel George Shoemaker, and the firm had 
purchased a tract of coal land near Pottsville, on 
which they began mining operations in the year 
1812. They raised several wagon loads of coal, 
and offered it for sale in the vicinity, but with 
the exception of a few blacksmiths, who had been 



INTRODUCTION OF COAL INTO USE. 63 

taught its value as a fuel by Colonel Shoemaker, 
no one could be found to purchase it. Allen soon 
became disheartened and sold his entire interest 
in the property to his partner, who, still persisting 
in the enterprise, mined a considerable quantity 
of the coal, filled ten wagons with it, and took it 
to Philadelphia in quest of a market. But it did 
not meet with a ready sale. People looked at the 
coals curiously, considered them to be nothing 
more than black stones, and, seeing no reason why 
they should burn better than stones of any other 
color, would not buy them. 

Colonel Shoemaker sounded the praises of his 
wares so vigorously and persistently, however, that 
at last a few purchasers were induced to take them 
in small quantities, just for trial. The trials, as 
usual, proved to be unsuccessful, and the people 
who had purchased the coals, believing they had 
been victimized, denounced Colonel Shoemaker as 
a cheat and a swindler ; while one person, whose 
wrath rose to a high pitch, procured a warrant for 
the colonel's arrest, on the charge that he was a 
common impostor. At this stage of the proceed- 
ings, Colonel Shoemaker, believing discretion to 
be the better part of valor, quietly left the city and 
started toward his home by a circuitous route, 
driving, it is said, some thirty miles out of his 
way, in order to avoid the officer of the law hold- 
ing the warrant for his arrest. 

This was indeed a discouraging beginning for 



64 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

the Schuylkill coal trade. Fortunately, however, 
not all of the colonel's customers at Philadelphia 
had met with failure in the effort to burn his coal. 
Messrs. Mellen & Bishop, a firm of iron factors 
in Delaware County, at the earnest solicitation of 
Colonel Shoemaker, made the experiment with 
the small quantity of coals purchased by them, 
and finding that the fuel burned successfully they 
announced that fact through the Philadelphia 
newspapers. Other iron workers were thus in- 
duced to try the coal, and finally all the furnaces 
along the Schuylkill had open doors for it. Event- 
ually it came into use for the purpose of generat- 
ing steam, the experiments of John Price Weth- 
erill in that direction having been only partially 
satisfactory, but those at the Phoenixville iron 
works in 1825 meeting with complete success. 

Still the prices which coal commanded in the 
Philadelphia market were not sufficient to pay for 
the labor of mining it and the cost of shipping it. 
So that, prior to 1818, nearly all the coal mined in 
the Schuylkill region v/as sold to the blacksmiths 
of the surrounding country. In that year, how- 
ever, the improvements of the Schuylkill naviga- 
tion were completed, and afforded an additional, 
though not by any means safe or sufficient, outlet 
for the products of the mines. By 1826 and 1827 
the growing importance of the coal trade became 
manifest, the Schuylkill navigation system was 
placed in excellent repair, and the mining busi- 



INTRODUCTION OF COAL INTO USE, 65 

ness of the district grew rapidly to enormous 
proportions. 

The northeasterly extension of the Wyoming 
coal basin, leaving the Susquehanna River at 
Pittston, follows the valley of the Lackawanna up 
to a point seven miles beyond Carbondale, where 
it cuts slightly into the counties of Wayne and 
Susquehanna, and there runs out. This extension 
is known as the Lackawanna region. Coal was 
dug up and experimented with here at the begin- 
ning of the present century. Its outcrop at the 
river bank was noted by Preston, a surveyor, in 
1804. In 1812 it was mined at Providence and 
burned in a rude grate by H. C. L. Von Storch. 
About this time the brothers William and Mau- 
rice Wurts, having been attracted by the mineral 
wealth of the region, came there from Philadel- 
phia and began explorations for the purpose of 
ascertaining the location, area, and quality of the 
beds of anthracite coal. William, the younger 
brother, in the course of his wanderings through 
the rugged hills and thick forests of the coun- 
try, chanced to meet a hunter by the name of 
David Nobles, who, having fled from the adjoining 
county of Wayne to avoid imprisonment for debt, 
was leading a precarious existence in the woods. 
Nobles was well acquainted with the country, 
knew where the outcroppings of coal were, and 
having entered into the service of Wurts, rendered 
him most valuable assistance. 



66 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

Their investigations having proved the presence 
of large bodies of coal, the Wurts brothers next 
procured title to the lands containing it, and then 
turned their attention to the problem of finding 
an outlet to market. They decided finally to ship 
coal on rafts by the Wallenpaupack Creek to the 
Lackawaxen, by the Lackawaxen to the Dela- 
ware, and thence to Philadelphia. This method 
was experimented on from 1814 to 1822 with vary- 
ing degrees of disaster. In the year last men- 
tioned they succeeded in taking to Philadelphia 
100 tons of coal, only to find the market flooded 
with 2,240 tons of Lehigh coal. Competition was 
apparently hopeless ; but instead of abandoning 
the enterprise, as men of less energy and persever- 
ance would now have done, Maurice Wurts turned 
his attention to a new project. This was nothing 
less than to make an outlet to the New York mar- 
ket by building a canal which should reach from 
the Hudson River at Rondout, across to the Del- 
aware at Port Jervis, and thence up that stream 
and the Lackawaxen to the nearest practicable 
point east of the coal beds, But when that point 
should be reached there would still be the Moosic 
Mountain, with its towering heights and precipi- 
tous bluffs, lying betw r een the boats and the mines* 
The Wurts brothers did not acknowledge this to 
be a serious obstacle. They proposed to overcome 
this difficulty by building across the mountains a 
railroad* which should consist largely of inclined 



INTRODUCTION OF COAL INTO USE. 67 

planes, the cars to be drawn up and let down these 
planes by means of stationary steam-engines, and 
to move along the stretches between the planes by 
force of gravity. Having formed their plans they 
set to work to carry them out. They procured 
the necessary legislation from the States of New 
York and Pennsylvania, they secured a charter in 
1823-25 for a corporation known as the Delaware 
and Hudson Canal Company, and by dint of su- 
preme personal effort they succeeded in obtaining 
capital enough to begin and carry on the work. 
In 1828 the canal was completed to its terminus 
at Honesdale, the gravity railroad having been 
already constructed from the coal fields to that 
point, and in 1829 the company began to ship 
coal to tide-water on the Hudson. It was a bold 
and ingenious scheme, and for those days it was 
an enterprise of immense proportions. That these 
two men conceived it and carried it out in the 
face of great difficulties and against overwhelming 
odds entitles them to a place in those higher orders 
of genius that are touched with the light of the 
heroic. The Lackawanna region has been pierced 
by many other lines of railway, and to-day- by these 
great highways a vast amount of Lackawanna coal 
is sent to the eastern cities and the seaboard. 

But as a rule, men who invested their money 
in coal lands in the early days after the discovery 
of coal lost the amount of the investment. They, 
with prophetic vision, saw the comfort, the com- 



68 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

merce, the manufactures, of a nation dependent on 
the products of the coal mines, but the people at 
large could not see so far. These pioneers made 
ready to supply an anticipated demand, but it did 
not come. Talking did not bring it. Exhibitions 
of the wonderful utility of the black coals served to 
arouse but a passing interest. No other product 
of the globe which has obtained a position of 
equal importance ever had to fight its way into 
public favor with such persistent effort through 
so many years. But when at last its worth be- 
came generally recognized, when the people had 
reached the conclusion that they wanted it, and 
its value in dollars had become fixed and perma- 
nent, then the pioneers of the industry had van- 
ished from the field ; they were disheartened, des- 
titute, or dead ; new hands and brains took up the 
work, matured the plans of the elders, and reaped 
the fortunes of which former generations had 
sown the seed. 

In the beginning the coal lands were mostly 
divided into small tracts, and held by persons 
many of whom thought to open mines on their 
property and carry on the business of mining as 
an individual enterprise. This plan of work was 
partially successful so long as coal could be dug 
from the outcrop and carted away like stones from 
a quarry ; but when it became necessary, as it soon 
did, to penetrate more deeply into the earth for 
the article of trade, then the cost of shafting, tun- 



INTRODUCTION OF COAL INTO USE. 69 

neling, and mining in general usually exceeded the 
resources of the individual operator, and either he 
succumbed to financial distress, or disposed of his 
mining interests to men or firms with more money. 
As the art of mining advanced with its necessities, 
it was learned, sometimes after bitter experience, 
that the business was profitable only when a large 
amount of capital was behind it. Therefore men 
who had invested a few thousand dollars trans- 
ferred their interests to men who had a few hun- 
dred thousand to invest, and these, in turn, as- 
sociating other capitalists with them, doubled or 
trebled the investment or ran it into the millions, 
forming companies or corporations to accomplish 
with their more perfect organization that which 
would be impossible to the individual. So it has 
come about that in these later days the individual 
operators have given place largely to the corpora- 
tions ; those who still remain in the field often 
operating their mines on a small capital at great 
disadvantage. In the bituminous regions, how- 
ever, this rule does not hold good. There the coal 
lies near the surface, is accessible, and easily 
mined. It needs only to be carried to the river 
bank and screened as it is loaded into boats and 
started on its way to market. Compared with the 
anthracite regions, it requires but a small capital 
here to sustain an extensive plant, and produce a 
large quantity of coal. Therefore we find, as we 
should expect to find, that in the bituminous dis- 



70 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

tricts the bulk of the coal is produced by individ- 
uals, firms, and small companies. In the anthra- 
cite regions, however, this rule is reversed. Of the 
36,204,000 tons of anthracite produced in the year 
1887, 16,109,387 tons, or nearly one half, were 
mined by five great companies ; namely : The Phil- 
adelphia and Keading; Delaware and Hudson; 
Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western ; Lehigh Val- 
ley ; and Pennsylvania Coal Company. The im- 
mense out-put of as many more large corporations 
left but a very small proportion of the total product 
to the small companies, firms, and individuals. 

It follows, as a matter of course, that the acre- 
age of coal lands held by these companies bears 
the same proportion to the total acreage that their 
coal out - put bears to the entire coal out -put. 
That is, they either own or hold under lease the 
great bulk of the coal beds of the anthracite 
regions. The value of coal lands varies with the 
number, thickness, and accessibility of the coal 
seams contained in it. vln the very early days of 
anthracite mining these lands were purchased 
from farmers and others at from twenty and thirty 
dollars to one hundred dollars per acre. Before 
1850 the price had advanced, in the Wyoming 
region, to from seventy-five dollars to two hundred 
dollars per acre. Recently a piece of coal land 
was sold in this region for $1,200 per acre, and 
another piece, containing thirty-six acres, was sold 
at the rate of 11,500 per acre. Perhaps from 



INTRODUCTION OF COAL INTO USE. 71 

$800 to $1,000 per acre might be considered an 
average price. In the Middle and Southern an- 
thracite regions the coal lands are of still greater 
value ; not because the quality of the mineral is 
better, nor because the market for it is more ac- 
cessible, but because the coal seams dip at a greater 
angle, and, therefore, a given number of acres 
contains a larger amount of coal. 

The system of leasing coal lands to coal oper- 
ators is a very common one, especially in the 
Wyoming valley, where the surface is so richly 
adapted to agricultural uses. The proprietor can, 
in this way, retain the use of the soil, and at the 
same time reap a handsome profit from the devel- 
opment of the mineral deposits beneath it. He 
invests no capital, runs no risk, and is sure of a 
steady income. As it is usual to work leased coal 
seams, wherever convenient, from openings made 
on the adjoining lands owned by the company, it 
is not often that the surface of leased property is 
interfered with, or if it is, but a comparatively 
small area of it is taken. The contract of lease 
usually stipulates that a certain royalty shall be 
paid to the lessor for each ton of coal mined, and 
it binds the lessee to mine not less than a certain 
number of tons each year ; or at least to pay roy- 
alties on not less than a certain number of tons 
each year, whether that number is or is not mined. 
Twenty years or more ago coal lands in the Wyo- 
ming district could be leased at the rate of ten 



72 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

cents per ton. Lately a large body of coal land 
was rented to the Lehigh Valley Coal Company at 
forty -five cents per ton, and it is said that one 
proprietor at Kingston has been offered a lease 
at fifty cents per ton, and has refused it. Per- 
haps from twenty -five cents to thirty -five cents 
per ton would be an average rate. 

As an example of the immense purchases made 
by these companies, it may be noted that the Phil- 
adelphia and Reading Company, in 1871, pur- 
chased one hundred thousand acres of coal lands 
in the Schuylkill region, at a cost of forty millions 
of dollars. And as an example of the amount of 
business done in a year, it may be noted that the 
Delaware and Hudson Canal Company paid in 
1887 $5,\)19,147.16 for the single item of mining 
coal, and that their coal sales for the same year 
amounted to $10,100,118.69. 

This concentration of coal lands and coal min- 
ing in the hands of great corporations, aside from 
its tendency to stifle healthy competition, is pro- 
ductive of many benefits. Coal can be mined 
much cheaper when the mining is done on a large 
scale. This is the rule, indeed, in all productive 
industries. An enterprise backed by the com- 
bined capital of many individuals is more certain 
to become successful and permanent than an en- 
terprise inaugurated by, and carried on with, the 
entire capital of a single individual. Especially 
is this the rule in a business attended with as 



INTRODUCTION OF COAL INTO USE. 73 

much risk as is the business of coal mining. One 
person may put his entire fortune of two or three 
hundred thousand dollars into a single colliery. 
A depression in the coal trade, a strike among the 
miners, an explosion, or a fire would be very apt 
to bring financial ruin on him. A company, with 
its great resources and its elastic character, can 
meet and recover from an adverse incident of this 
kind with scarcely a perceptible shock to its busi- 
ness. It is simply one of the items of loss which 
it is prepared to cover with a larger item of profit. 
There is also the additional assurance that all 
work that is done will be well done. The most 
careful observations and calculations are made of 
the amount and quality of included coal in any 
tract of land before it is purchased, and the best 
surveyors are employed to mark out the boundary 
lines of lands. The services of the most skillful 
mining engineers are retained, at salaries which 
no individual operator could afford to pay. Their 
forces are well organized, their mining operations 
are conducted with system and economy, and they 
are able to keep abreast of the age in all inven- 
tions and appliances that insure greater facility in 
mining and manufacturing, and greater safety to 
the workmen. Their employees are paid promptly 
at stated periods, and the possibility of a work- 
man losing bis wages by reason of neglect or fail- 
ure on the part of his employer is reduced to a 
minimum. 



74 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

In general, it may be said that the control of 
the anthracite coal business by the great corpo- 
rations, rather than by individual operators, is an 
undoubted benefit, not only to all the parties in 
direct interest, but to commerce and society as a 
whole. The only danger to be feared is from an 
abuse of the great powers to which these com- 
panies have attained ; a danger which, thus far, 
has not seriously menaced the community. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE WAY INTO THE MINES. 

A wise coal operator never begins to open a 
mine for the purpose of taking out coal until he 
knows the character of the bed and the quality of 
the mineral. This knowledge can only be obtained 
by an exhaustive search for, and a careful exam- 
ination of, all surface indications, and by drilling 
or boring 1 holes down to and through the strata of 
coal. This is called " prospecting." The exam- 
iner in a new field will first look for outcrops. He 
will follow up the valleys and inspect the ledges 
and the banks of streams. If he be so fortunate 
as to find an exposure of the coal seams, or of any 
one of them, he will measure its thickness, will 
calculate its dip and strike, and will follow its 
outcrop. He will also study and make careful 
note of the rock strata with which it is associated, 
for by this means he may be able to determine the 
probability of other seams lying above or below 
it. This examination of the rock strata he will 
make, whether coal is visible or not visible. It 
will be of much service to him. For instance, it 
is known that the great Baltimore vein in the 
Wyoming valley is usually overlaid by a coarse 



76 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

red sandstone. If the examiner finds rock of this 
character in that section, he has good reason to 
hope that coal lies beneath it. Under the lowest 
coal seam of the anthracite beds there is found, 
as a rule, a rock known as the conglomerate. If, 
therefore, the explorer finds an outcrop of con- 
glomerate, he will know that, as a rule, he need 
not look for coal beyond it. This rock, coming to 
the surface on the westerly side of the Moosic 
range of mountains, marks the limit of the Lack- 
awanna coal field toward the east. No one, hav- 
ing once studied the conglomerate rock, could mis- 
take it for any other, though its composition is 
very simple. It is nothing more than white, 
water-worn quartz pebbles, held together by a 
firm, lead-colored cement. But it is a rock of 
unusual hardness and durability. It is proof 
against the erosive action of water, grows harder 
by exposure to the air, and has a consistency 
that approximates to that of iron. In the coal 
districts it is used largely for building purposes, 
where heavy walls and foundations are required. 
Experience has taught that there are no coal 
seams below the conglomerate, so that wherever 
this is found as a surface rock, or wherever it is 
pierced by the drill, it is usually unnecessary to 
explore below it. If no coal outcrop is found, the 
bed of a stream is searched for fragments of the 
mineral, and, if any are discovered, they are traced 
to their source. Coal is sometimes exposed where 



THE WAY INTO THE MINES. 77 

a tree has been uprooted by the wind, and pieces 
of it have been found in the soil thrown out at a 
groundhog's burrow. 

Wagon roads crossing the country may be 
scanned for traces of the " smut " or " blossom." 
This is the decomposed outcrop, which has become 
mingled with the soil, and may be more readily 
distinguished in the bed of a traveled road than 
elsewhere. Other surface indications failing, the 
topographical features of this section of country 
should be studied. Wherever the coal seams 
come to the surface, being softer than the rock 
strata above and below them, they are disinte- 
grated and eroded more rapidly by the action of 
the atmosphere and the elements. This wearing 
away of the exposed coal leaves the surface out- 
line in the form of a bench or terrace, which fol- 
lows the line of the outcrop. And this form is 
retained even with a thick deposit of soil over the 
edges of the strata. Small shafts may be sunk 
or tunnels driven through this thickness of earth, 
and the outcrop explored in this way. This pro- 
cess of examination is of more value in the bitu- 
minous than in the anthracite regions, since the 
bituminous coal, being soft, is more rapidly eroded, 
and the terrace formation resulting from such ero- 
sion is more distinct and certain. In these days, 
in the anthracite coal fields, there is hardly an 
area of any great extent in which mines have not 
been actually opened. These mines, therefore, in 



78 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

the facilities they afford for studying exposed 
strata and developed coal seams, offer the best 
means of acquiring knowledge concerning the coal 
beds of adjoining tracts. In a country where no 
surface indications of coal are found over a large 
area, it is hardly worth while to explore for it by 
boring. In the anthracite regions of Pennsyl- 
vania the limits of the coal beds are now so accu- 
rately denned that it is seldom necessary to bore 
for the purpose of testing the presence of coal. 
But it is always advisable, before opening a mine 
in a new field, to test the depth, dip, and quality 
of the coal and the character of the seams by 
sinking one or more bore holes. Surface meas- 
urements of a seam are, at best, very uncertain, 
as indications of its continuing character. The 
angle of dip may change radically before a depth 
of one hundred feet shall be reached. And coal 
undergoes so great deterioration by long exposure 
to the atmosphere that, in order to judge the qual- 
ity of a coal bed, it is necessary to have a speci- 
men fragment from it that has been hidden away 
in the rocks. Hence the necessity of boring. 

Hand drills were generally used in the early 
days of prospecting, and a sand pump drew out 
the sludge or borings for examination. This was 
superseded by the spring pole method, which in 
turn gave way to the rope method in use in the 
oil regions, the borings in each case being care- 
fully preserved for inspection. The diamond 



THE WAY INTO THE MINES. 79 

drill is the one now in common use in the coal 
regions. Its cutting end is in the form of a circle 
set with black, amorphous diamonds. It cuts an 
annular groove in the rock as it descends, forming 
a core, which is withdrawn with the drill, and 
which may be examined in vertical section. The 
sludge is washed out by a stream of water which 
passes down through the centre of the drill rod, 
and is forced back to the surface between the rod 
and the face of the bore hole. The invention of 
this rotary cutting drill is due to Leschot of Ge- 
neva, and the method of flushing the hole to 
Flauvelle. 

After having obtained all possible information 
concerning his coal property, and, if he be wise, 
embodying it in the form of maps, the coal oper- 
ator must decide where he shall make an opening 
for mining purposes, and what kind of an open- 
ing he shall make. The answers to these two 
questions are, to a certain extent, dependent on 
each other, as certain kinds of openings must be 
located at certain places. When coal was first 
gathered for experiment or observation, it was 
taken up loosely from the ground, where it had 
fallen or been broken down from the outcrop of 
some seam. As it came into demand for prac- 
tical purposes, it was quarried from this outcrop 
backward and downward, as stones for building 
purposes are now quarried, the seam being un- 
covered as the work proceeded. This process was 



80 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

followed along the line of the outcrop, but exca- 
vations were not made to any considerable depth, 
owing to the great expense of uncovering the 
coal. 

The open quarry system of mining coal has 
been successfully practiced in America in but a 
few places. One of these was the great Sum- 
mit Hill open mine, near Mauch Chunk, where 
the Lehigh coal was first discovered. Here, on 
a hill-top, was a horizontal coal bed, some sixty 
acres in extent, and varying in thickness from 
fifteen to fifty feet. Over this was a covering of 
rock, slate, and earth from three to fifteen feet in 
thickness. This bed was mined by simply remov- 
ing the covering and taking the coal out as from 
a quarry. Other examples of this method are 
seen at Hollywood Colliery, and at Hazleton 
No. 6 Colliery, both near Hazleton, in Luzerne 
County. There are isolated instances of this 
method of stripping elsewhere in the anthracite 
regions, but as a rule the conditions are not favor- 
able for it. Ordinarily x there are four methods of 
making an entrance into a mine for the purpose 
of taking out coal. These are known as the drift, 
the tunnel, the slope, and the shaft. 

To the early miners the drift was the favorite 
mode of entry. Finding an exposed seam of coal 
in the face of a ledge or cliff, they would dig in 
on it and bring the coal out from the opening in 
wheelbarrows. A place was selected, if possible, 



THE WAY INTO THE MINES, 81 

where a creek or river ran at the base of the 
ledge, and the coal was dumped from the wheel- 
barrow directly into a boat. In default of a 
water way a wagon road was built at the foot of 
the hill or cliff, a platform extended out over it, 
and the coal was thus loaded from the wheel- 
barrow into the wagon. 

The modern drift, though fashioned on an im- 
proved plan, is the simplest and least expensive 
way of making an entrance into a coal mine. The 
outline of the proposed opening is first marked 
out on the edge of the exposed coal seam. From 
fifteen to eighteen feet is an ordinary width to 
accommodate two tracks, and ten feet will read- 
ily accommodate one. Seven feet is an average 
height, though, if the seam be comparatively flat, 
the coal will be taken down until the rock is 
reached, even though a greater height should be 
attained. With this width and height the opening 
is cut into the hill through the coal seam. The 
floor of the drift must have a constant upward 
grade as it progresses inward, in order that the 
water may run out, and that loaded cars may be 
hauled more easily. The mouth of the drift must 
be above the level of the adjacent valley or stream, 
so that the water may be carried away, and the 
drift is therefore what is known as a water-level 
opening. It is usually necessary to support the 
roof and sides of the drift by timbers joined to- 
gether in the form of a bent, and placed more or 



82 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

less closely to each other. These timbers are also 
sometimes lined by sticks placed behind and over 
them horizontally, and known as " lagging." It 
will be seen that the conditions under which the 
opening by drift may be made place a serious lim- 
itation on the use of this method. It will also 
now be seen why the drift is the simplest and most 
economical mode of making an entrance to a mine. 
In this method there is no expense for removing 
earth or for cutting through rock, nor any cost at 
any time of pumping water or of hoisting coah 
When the fact is remembered that it sometimes 
costs from $50,000 to $100,000 to sink a deep 
shaft through hard rock, and that to this amount 
must be added the cost of buildings, machinery, 
and repairs, and the perpetual cost of pumping 
water and of hoisting coal, the economy of the drift 
method will be appreciated. But the day of drift 
mining in the anthracite regions has gone by. 
Those portions of the coal beds lying above water 
level have been largely mined out, and the areas 
of coal that are now accessible by drift are very 
limited. In the bituminous districts, however, 
where the seams lie comparatively flat and the 
coal is mostly above water level, the method by 
drift is still almost universally used. 

Next to a drift, the tunnel is the simplest and 
most economical method, under certain circum- 
stances, of making an entrance into a mine. This 
is a passage driven across the measures, and at 



THE WAY INTO THE MINES. 83 

right angles to the seam, in order to reach coal 
which at the point of opening is not exposed. 
The tunnel is usually driven into the side of a 
hill. The earth is first dug away until the rock is 
exposed, or, if the soil be too deep for that, only 
enough of it is taken to make a vertical face for 
the mouth of the tunnel. The opening is then 
driven into the hill at about the same width and 
height that a drift would be made, and in practi- 
cally the same manner. If there is a section of 
earth tunneling at the mouth, the timbering must 
be close, and the lagging will be of heavy planks. 
When the solid rock is reached, however, it is not 
often that any timbering is necessary, the sides 
and roof being so hard and firm as not to need 
support. This passage is driven against the face 
of a coal seam, and when the coal is finally reached 
the tunnel proper ends, a passage is opened to the 
right and one to the left along the strike of the 
seam, and from these gangways the coal is mined. 
The tunnel, like the drift, must be above water 
level, and its floor must have a descending grade 
toward the mouth, to carry off water. The ex- 
pense of the tunnel, and its superiority to the 
slope or shaft, will depend upon the distance 
through which the rock must be pierced before 
coal is reached. It is especially advisable, there- 
fore, before opening a tunnel, to have an accurate 
map of the location and dip of the coal seams to 
be struck by it, otherwise no approximate calcula- 



84 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

% 

tion can be made of the extent or cost of the 
work. 

In the anthracite districts, where the seams are 
sharply pitching, tunnels are driven in the interior 
of a mine from the workings of a seam already 
opened across the intervening measures to strike 
an adjacent seam. In this way two, three, or 
more coal seams can be worked, and the coal can 
all be brought out at one surface opening. This 
is virtually the only kind of tunneling that is now 
done in the anthracite regions ; for, as has already 
been explained, the coal that lay above water level 
and was thus accessible by tunnel has now been 
mostly mined out. 

If there is an outcrop of coal on the tract to be 
mined, and the dip of the seam is more than 
twenty degrees, it is usually advisable to enter the 
mine by means of a slope. This is a passage 
which, beginning at the outcrop, follows the coal 
seam down until the necessary depth is. reached. 
It is driven in the coal. The distinction between 
the drift and the slope is that the drift is driven 
from the surface on the strike of the seam while 
the slope is driven on its dip. Where the coal 
seam comes within a moderate distance of the sur- 
face, as at an anticlinal ridge, a slope may be 
driven through the rock until the coal is reached 
at the axis, and from that point follow the seam 
down. Sometimes a shaft is sunk to the top of an 
anticlinal ridge, and from its foot two slopes are 




3 
O 



X 



o 

o 
u 



THE WAY INTO THE MINES. 85 

driven, one down each side of the roll, in opposite 
directions. If the seam is very irregular, or if it is 
much broken by faults, there may be a great deal 
of rock cutting to be done in order to preserve the 
uniformity of grade necessary for the slope. The 
cost may, indeed, in this case, amount to more 
than would have been sufficient to sink a shaft to 
the same depth, although, as a rule, the entrance 
by slope should cost only about one fourth of that 
by shaft. 

The same methods are employed in sinking a 
slope as are used in driving a drift, except that 
generally the timbering need not be so heavy. 
The minimum height of the slope is about 6|- feet, 
the width at the top, or collar, about 8 feet, and 
the width at the bottom, or spread, about 12 feet. 
If a double track is desired the spread should be 
18 feet and the collar 14 feet. In the Wyoming 
region, where the dip is usually less than twenty 
degrees, with infrequent outcrops, the slope is not 
in general use; but in the Southern coal field, 
where the dip varies from twenty degrees to the 
vertical, the slope is the most common method of 
entering a mine. There the opening is driven 
dow T n for a distance of 300 feet, at which point 
gangways are started out to right and left, along 
the strike, and chambers driven from them back 
toward the surface. This is called the first lift. 
The slope is then continued downward for another 
distance of 300 feet, new gangways and chambers 



86 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

are laid off, and this is called the second lift. This 
process is continued until the synclinal basin is 
reached. 

Where the dip of the slope is less than thirty- 
degrees the coal is brought to the surface in the 
car into which it was first loaded in the mine. 
At a greater angle than this the ordinary mine 
car is superseded by a car or carriage especially 
adapted to carrying coal up a steep incline. 

Where there is no outcrop in the tract to be 
mined, and the coal lies below water level, the 
best mode of making an entrance to it is by shaft. 
In the Wyoming region, since the upper veins 
have been so generally mined out, nearly a]l the 
openings are by shaft. The location of the shaft 
at the surface should be such that when it is com- 
pleted its foot shall be at the bottom, or nearly 
at the bottom, of the synclinal valley into which 
it is sunk. As will be more readily seen here- 
after, this is necessary in order to carry the 
water of the mine to the foot of the shaft, to fa- 
cilitate the transportation of coal under ground, 
and to get room to open up the greatest possi- 
ble working area. The depth to which a shaft 
must be sunk depends on the seam to be reached, 
and on the district in which it is located. At 
Carbondale, in the northeasterly extremity of the 
Wyoming basin, the average depth to the con- 
glomerate or bed of the lowest coal seam is 250 
feet. From Scran ton to Pittston it is from 500 



THE WAY INTO THE MINES. 87 

to 600 feet. At Wilkes Barre it is 1,200 feet. 
It reaches its greatest average depth a mile north- 
east of Nanticoke, where it is from 1,500 to 1,600 
feet. 

This will be the limit of depth for shafts in the 
Wyoming region. At present the average depth 
is from '800 to 400 feet, and there are few that 
are more than 800 feet deep. The red-ash vein 
to which most of the shafts are now being sunk 
is, at Pittston in the middle of the general basin, 
from 450 to 650 feet below the surface* In the 
southern anthracite region the average depth of 
shafts is somewhat greater, the maximum depth 
being reached in the vicinity of Potts ville, where 
the Pottsville deep shafts are about 1,600 feet in 
depth. 

In beginning to open a shaft a rectangular space 
is staked out on the ground from four to eight feet 
wider and longer than the proposed dimensions 
of the shaft; and the soil and loose stones are 
thrown out from this larger area until bed rock is 
reached, which is usually done, except in the river 
bottom lands, within a depth of twenty feet. 

From this rock as a foundation a cribbing of 
solid timber, twelve inches square, is built up to 
the surface on the four sides of the opening to 
prevent the earth from caving in. Sometimes 
heavy walls of masonry are built up instead of 
the timber cribbing, and though the original cost 
is greater, the purpose is far better answered by 



88 COAL AND THE COAL MINES, 

the stone curbing. When this has been com- 
pleted, sinking through the rock goes on by the 
ordinary process of blasting, plumb lines being 
hung at the corners of the shaft to keep the open- 
ing vertical. 

An act of the Pennsylvania legislature, ap- 
proved June 30, 1885, regulates the conduct of 
coal mining in the State so far as the safety of 
persons employed in and about the mines is con- 
cerned. Former acts are consolidated and revised 
in this, and new provisions are added. By virtue 
of this act both the anthracite and bituminous coal 
fields are divided into districts, each of which is 
placed in charge of an inspector, whose duty it 
is to see that the provisions of the law are car- 
ried out, and to make annual report to the Sec- 
retary of Internal Affairs of such facts and statis- 
tics as the law requires to be made. As there 
will be frequent occasion hereafter to refer to 
various provisions of this act of assembly* it will 
be mentioned simply as the act of 1885. The 
matter is brought up here in order that the rule 
relating to the sinking of shafts, as laid down 
in the act, may be referred to. These rules pro- 
vide the manner in which the necessary structures 
at the mouth of the opening shall be erected, 
what precautions shall be taken to prevent mate- 
rial from falling into the pit, how the ascent and 
descent shall be made, that all blasts during the 
process of sinking shall be exploded by an electric 



THE WAY INTO THE MINES. 89 

battery, etc. All these rules have but one object, 
the safety of the workmen. 

The horizontal dimensions of the modern shaft 
average about twelve feet in width by thirty feet 
in length. This space is divided crosswise, down 
the entire depth of the shaft, into compartments 
of which there are usually four. The first of these 
compartments is the pump way, a space devoted 
to the pipes, pump-rod, and other appliances con- 
nected with the pumping system. To this six feet 
in breadth is allowed. Then come, in succession, 
the two carriage ways, each of which may be seven 
feet wide, and, finally, the air passage through 
which the foul air is exhausted from the mine, 
and to which ten feet is appropriated. The par- 
titions between these compartments are made of 
oak sticks six inches square, called buntons. The 
ends of the buntons are let into the rock sides of 
the £haft, and they are placed horizontally at a 
vertical distance from each other of about four 
feet. These bunton partitions are then closely 
boarded down the entire distance. The partition 
between the hoisting compartment and the air- 
way is not only boarded up, but the boards are 
matched and are rabbeted together. It is neces- 
sary to make as nearly air-tight as possible this 
way for the passage of air, and where the edges of 
the boarding meet the rock sides of the shaft the 
irregularities are carefully filled in with brick and 
mortar. 



90 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

Fastened to the buntons at each side of each 
hoisting compartment are continuous strips of hard 
wood, from four to six inches square, reaching 
from the top of the shaft to its bottom. These are 
the " guides." To each side of the carriage, which 
raises and lowers men and materials, is fastened an 
iron shoe, shaped like a small rectangular box with- 
out top or ends. This shoe fits loosely on to the 
guide, slides up and down it, and serves to keep the 
carriage steady while it is ascending or descend- 
ing. This invention is due to John Curr of Shef- 
field, England, who introduced it as early as 1798. 
The ordinary carriage consists of a wooden plat- 
form with vertical posts at the middle of the sides 
united by a cross-beam at the top, and all solidly 
built and thoroughly braced. The posts are just 
inside of the guides when the carriage is in place, 
and are kept parallel to them by the shoes already 
mentioned. To the middle of the cross-beam is 
attached the end of a wire cable, from which the 
carriage is suspended, and by which it is raised 
and lowered. On the floor of the platform, which 
is planked over, a track is built uniform with the 
track at the foot and head of the shaft, and con- 
tinuous with it when the carriage is at rest at 
either place. The mine car is pushed on to the 
platform of the carriage and fastened there by a 
device which clings to the axle or blocks the 
wheels. 

At the mouth of the shaft and projecting into 




VERTICAL SECTION OF FOOT OF SHAFT WITH ASCENDING 
CARRIAGE. 



if 



THE WAY INTO THE MINES. 91 

it are the "wings," "keeps," or " cage rests," 
which are pressed against the sides of the shaft 
by the ascending carriage, but spring back into 
place underneath it and support it while it is at 
rest. When the carriage is ready to descend the 
wings are withdrawn by hand levers. 

The safety carriage is now in general use in at 
least one hoisting compartment of every shaft. 
This carriage is built of wrought iron instead of 
wood ; it has a bonnet or roof as a protection 
against objects falling down the shaft, and it has 
safety clutches or dogs to stop the carriage and 
hold it in place in case of accident by breaking 
ropes or machinery. Operators are required by 
the act of 1885 to provide safety carriages for the 
use of their employees, and also to keep movable 
gates or covers at the mouth of each shaft to pre- 
vent persons and materials from falling into the 
opening. 

Where mining is done by shaft there is seldom 
any other way provided for the passage of work- 
men in and out than the way by the carriage. 
A small shaft for the admission of air is some- 
times driven down to the highest part of the 
seam, and ladders are placed in the opening on 
which men may climb up and down, but these 
ladders are seldom used save in an emergency. 
It is made obligatory upon operators, by the act 
of 1885, to provide two openings to every seam 
of coal that is being worked ; these openings to 



92 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

be at least sixty feet apart underground, and one 
hundred and fifty feet apart at the surface. The 
object of this rule is to provide a way of escape 
for workmen in case of accident to the main 
outlet. 

It is seldom necessary, however, in these days, 
to sink a separate shaft in order to comply with 
this provision of the law ; the underground work- 
ings of the mines having such extensive connec- 
tions that often not only two but many openings 
are accessible from each seam. 

As to the comparative cost of the different 
methods of entry, the drift is of course the cheap- 
est. In this method the very first blow of the 
pick brings down a fragment of coal that may be 
sent to market and sold. For this reason the 
sinking of a slope is less expensive than tunnel- 
ing or shafting, because the excavation is made 
in the coal. It may be said to cost from twenty- 
five to fifty dollars per linear yard to sink an ordi- 
nary double track slope, from fifty to seventy-five 
dollars per linear yard to drive a tunnel of aver- 
age cross-section to accommodate two tracks, and 
from three hundred to five hundred dollars per 
linear yard to sink a shaft with four compart- 
ments. Of course circumstances, especially the 
character of strata, may greatly increase or lessen 
these limits of cost. Indeed, it has happened that 
a shaft in process of sinking, which had already 
cost many thousands of dollars, has been neces- 



THE WAY INTO THE MINES. 93 

sarily abandoned because an intractable bed of 
quicksand has been encountered. 

The experienced coal operator, knowing the 
advantages and disadvantages of each of these 
methods of entering a mine, and the adaptability 
of each to his particular coal bed, will find no 
difficulty in making a selection from them. In- 
deed, there may be, and usually is, practically, no 
choice. The selection of a site for the opening 
is ordinarily attended with but little more freedom 
of choice. The outcrop, if there be one, the to- 
pography of the surface, the outline of the coal 
seam, the accessibility of the spot, the location of 
the breaker, all govern in the selection of the site, 
and usually all point to the one most available 
spot. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

A PLAN OF A COAL MINE. 

The progress that has been made in the science 
of mining coal within the last half century bears 
favorable comparison with the progress that has 
been made in the other industrial sciences. To- 
day the ripest experience and the best engineering 
skill in the land are brought to bear upon the 
problems connected with coal mining. In com- 
parison with the marked ability employed and the 
marked success attained in the mining enterprises 
of to-day, the efforts of the early miners are almost 
amusing. The pick and the wedge were the chief 
instruments used in getting out coal. Powder 
was not thought to be available until John Flani- 
gan, a miner for Abijah Smith, introduced it into 
the mines in 1818. It is said that when openings 
were first made for coal in the vicinity of Potts- 
ville shallow shafts were sunk, and the coal was 
hoisted in a large vessel by means of a common 
windlass. As soon as the water became trouble- 
some, which was usually as soon as the shaft had 
reached a depth of twenty or thirty feet, this 
opening was abandoned, a new shaft sunk, and the 
process repeated. 



A PLAN OF A COAL MINE. 95 

The mine operator of to-day, having decided 
upon the shaft as the best method of entry into 
his mine, sinks it to the bottom of the coal bed, so 
that its longest dimension shall be with the dip of 
the seam. Then from each side of the shaft, and 
at right angles to it, he cuts a passage out through 
the coal with a width of from ten to fourteen feet. 
These are the beginnings of the " gangways." 
Then from each end of the rectangular foot of the 
shaft he cuts another passage, at right angles to 
the first one, about six or eight feet wide, and ex- 
tending to a distance of from fifteen to thirty feet. 
These are the first " cross-headings." At the ex- 
tremities of the cross-headings passages are now 
driven parallel to the gangways. These last pas- 
sages are called "airways." When the gangways 
and airways have reached a distance of from sixty 
to one hundred feet from the foot of the shaft they 
are united by new cross-headings. 

It is now apparent that two pillars of coal, each 
from fifteen to thirty feet wide and from sixty to 
one hundred feet long are left on each side of the 
shaft. Larger pillars than these may be left if the 
roof about the shaft should need more support. 
It is also apparent, the coal seam being inclined, 
that the level of one of the airways is higher than 
the level of the gangway, and the level of the 
other airway is lower. 

It will be remembered that the design was to 
sink the shaft so that its foot should be nearly to 



96 COAL AND THE COAL MINES, 

the bottom of the synclinal valley or basin. If 
this has been done, then it is possible that the pas- 
sage below the foot of the shaft parallel to the 
gangway actually runs along the synclinal axis. 
But if the bottom of the valley is still lower, the 
cross-headings will be driven farther down and a 
new parallel passage made, and, if necessary, still 
another. These openings now slope from the foot 
of the shaft downward, and in them is collected 
not only the water that may fall from the shaft, 
but, as the work advances, all the water that comes 
from all parts of the mine. This basin which is 
thus made to receive the mine water is called the 
" sump," and from it the water is pumped up 
through the shaft and discharged at the surface. 
If the mine happens to be a very wet one it will 
require the constant labor of the most powerful 
pumping engine to keep the level of the water in 
the sump lower than the foot of the shaft. In 
some cases, in older workings, a section of the mine 
which has been worked out and abandoned is used 
for a sump, and then the water may cover an area 
many acres in extent. When a shaft has been 
newly sunk, the openings for the sump are the 
only ones that are made below the level of the 
foot of the shaft or below the level of the gang- 
way. Henceforth all the workings will be made 
on the upper side of the gangway, extending up 
the slope of the seam, until such time as it may be 
deemed advisable to sink an inside slope to open 



A PLAN OF A COAL MINE. 97 

a new set of workings on a lower level. The 
main gangway on one side of the shaft and the 
airway above it are now carried along simultane- 
ously, and parallel with each other, and are united 
at distances of from forty to sixty feet by cross- 
headings. As soon as the last cross-heading is 
opened the one which immediately preceded it is 
walled up as tightly as possible. This is to 
insure ventilation. A current of air comes down 
the hoisting-way of the shaft, passes into the 
gangway and along it to the last cross-heading, 
where it crosses up into the airway and traverses 
tlie airway back to the cross-heading that was 
driven up from the upper end of the foot of the 
shaft. Passing down this cross-headiog it comes 
to the air compartment of the shaft, and is drawn 
out to the surface by a powerful fan. This is the 
ventilating system of the mine in its simplest form. 
It is apparent that if any of the cross-headings 
nearer to the shaft than the last one should be 
left open, the air current would take a short 
coarse through it up to the airway, and so back to 
the shaft, without going to the extremity of the 
gangway at all. This gangway is the main artery 
of the mine ; it is the highway by which all the 
empty cars go in to the working faces, and by which 
all the loaded cars come out to the foot of the 
shaft ; it is the general watercourse by which the 
entire mine above it is drained, and by which the 
water is carried to the sump. In comparatively 



98 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

flat seams its height is the height of the slate or 
rock roof of the coal bed, but in steep pitching 
seams it is made seven or eight feet high with a 
roof wholly or partly of coal. In some cases the 
roof and sides are so firm that no timbering" is 
required, and in other cases the timbering must 
be close and heavy in order to give the necessary 
support and security. The floor of the gangway 
must be given a constantly ascending grade, usu- 
ally from six inches to one foot in every hundred 
feet, as it is driven inward. This is to facilitate 
drainage and the movement of loaded cars. 

Where the strata are horizontal, or nearly so, as 
in many of the bituminous mines, the gangway 
may, and usually does, take a perfectly straight 
course. This is also true where the line of strike 
has but a single direction, no matter how steep the 
pitch of the seam may be. But both of these con- 
ditions are so rare in the anthracite regions that 
one seldom finds a gangway driven for any con- 
siderable distance in one direction. The surface 
of an inclined coal seam is not dissimilar to the 
surface of one side of a range of small hills. 
Any one who has seen a railroad track winding in 
and out along such a range, keeping to the surface 
of the ground and preserving a uniformity of 
grade, can understand why, for the same reason^, 
the gangway must often change direction in fol- 
lowing the seam of coal. It must curve in around 
the valleys and hollows that indent the seam in 



A PLAN OF A COAL MINE. 99 

the same manner that a surface railroad curves in 
around the depression where some hillside brook 
runs down to meet the stream, the course of which 
the railroad tries to follow ; and it must strike out 
around the projections of the seam in the same 
way in which a surface railroad bends out around 
the projecting spurs of the hill range along which 
it runs. But the coal seam is more irregular and 
more uncertain in its outline than the hillside, and 
the curves in it are sharper and more varied. 
The surface railroad too may shorten its route 
and relieve its curves by bridging its small valleys 
and cutting through its narrow ridges. For the 
gangway this cannot be done. As a rule the coal 
seam must be followed, no matter where it leads. 
And it often leads in strange courses, — in courses 
that at times curve back on themselves like a 
horseshoe and point toward the foot of the shaft. 
The mining superintendent or engineer never 
knows in advance just what tortuous course his 
main artery may take. He cannot go over the 
ground and stake out his line as a civil engineer 
does for a surface railway ; he must build as he 
advances, not knowing what the rock and coal 
may hide in the next foot ahead of him. He 
must be prepared to encounter faults, fissures, 
streams of water, diluvial deposits, and every 
other obstacle known to mining engineers. 

There are several systems of laying out a mine 
for actual working after the gangway has been 



100 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

driven a sufficient distance. The one most com- 
monly in use in the anthracite region is known as 
the " pillar and breast " system. In the bitumi- 
nous mines it is called the " pillar and room," 
and in the mines of Great Britain the " bord and 
jjillar." It will be borne in mind that the mine 
which is now being described is in the Wyoming 
region, where the seams are comparatively flat, 
the entrance usually by shaft, and the method of 
working is the pillar and breast system. The 
gangway and airway are not driven far, not more 
than two or three hundred feet, perhaps, before 
the openings are made for the larger production of 
coal. Beginning on the upper side of the airway, 
at such a distance from the shaft as will leave a 
reasonably large sustaining pillar, perhaps from 
sixty to one hundred feet, an opening is made and 
driven up the seam at right angles to the airway. 
This opening is called a " chamber "or " breast." 
In the bituminous districts it is known as a 
"room." The chamber is usually about twenty- 
four feet wide, though where the roof is exception- 
ally good its width may be increased to thirty-six 
feet. It is not often opened the full width at the 
airway. Instead of this a narrow passage, large 
enough to accommodate the mine car track, is 
driven up to a distance not exceeding fifteen feet, 
and it is from this point that the chamber is 
driven up at its full width. This narrow opening 
can be more easily closed in case it is desired to 



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A\/#f ■ ■ • » ■ i i. 



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PLAN OF AN ANTHRACITE MINE WITH A SHAFT ENTRANCE. 



1; 



A PLAN OF A COAL MINE. 101 

prevent the passage of air through it, and besides 
a greater proportion of coal is left in pillars 
along the airway to prevent the passage from be- 
coming blockaded by falls. When the first 
chamber has been driven up a distance equal to 
its width, a new chamber is begun parallel to it 
and on the side farthest from the shaft. These 
two chambers are now separated by a wall of coal 
from fourteen to twenty feefc thick. If, however, 
the workings are deep and there is danger from 
the weight of superincumbent strata, the wall 
should be made as thick as the chamber is wide. 
When the new chamber has been driven to a 
distance of twenty-five feet, or, if the mine is free 
from gas and the ventilation is good, to a distance 
of forty or sixty feet, the wall between the two 
chambers is pierced by an opening from six to 
ten feet wide. This is called a cross-heading or 
w entrance." A partition is now built across the 
airway between the openings to the two chambers, 
and the air current is thus forced up into the last 
chamber, across through the entrance into the 
first, down it to the airway again, and so in its 
regular course back to the foot of the shaft. In 
the mean time progress has been made in the first 
chamber, and by the time the second chamber has 
been driven another distance of thirty or sixty feet, 
the entrance which will then be cut through the 
wall will find the first chamber still in advance. 
The inner extremity of the chamber is called the 



102 COAL AND TEE COAL MINES. 

" face." It is sometimes spoken of also as the 
" breast," though this last name is properly that 
of the chamber as a whole. The wall of coal at 
the side of the chamber is called the " rib." A 
third chamber is now begun and driven up parallel 
to the other two, then a fourth, a fifth, and so on ; 
as many chambers, indeed, as can be laid off in 
this way without deviating too greatly from a right 
angle to the airway. But the face of the first 
chamber is kept in advance of the face of the sec- 
ond, the face of the second in advance of the face 
of the third, and so on, until the limit of length is 
reached. This limit is determined, to some ex- 
tent, by the dip of the seam. In comparatively 
flat workings a set of chambers may be driven in 
to a distance of five hundred, or even six hundred 
feet. Where the pitch is steep, however, two 
hundred or three hundred feet is the greatest 
length at which chambers can be economically 
worked. The limit of length of chambers is some- 
times determined also by an outcrop, an anticlinal 
axis, a fault, or a boundary line. The wall of 
coal left between any two chambers is divided by 
the entrances cut through it into a line of pillars 
nearly uniform in size. As soon as the second 
entrance from the airway is cut through the wall 
the first entrance is blocked tightly up, and as 
soon as the third entrance is cut through the sec- 
ond is closed, and so on to the extremity of the 
line of pillars. This is to compel the air current 



A PLAN OF A COAL MINE. 103 

to pass up to the very face of the chamber before 
it can find a way across to the other chambers and 
down again into the airway. If the air of the 
mine is bad, or if the coal is giving off deleterious 
gases with rapidity, a " brattice " or rude board 
partition is built from the lower side of the last 
entrance diagonally up toward the face of the 
chamber to force the air to the very point where 
men are working before it finds its way out 
through an open entrance. These boards are 
sometimes replaced by a sheet of coarse canvas, 
called brattice cloth, which is lighter, more easily 
handled, and answers the same purpose. 

From the mine car track in the gangway a 
branch track is built, crossing the airway and run- 
ning up each chamber to its face. Up this branch 
track a mule draws the empty car, and when 
it is loaded it is let down to the gangway by the 
miner's laborer. If the dip of the chamber is 
too steep — more than ten degrees — for a mule 
to draw the car up, a light car, used only in the 
chamber and called a " buggy," is pushed up by 
hand, and when the dip is too steep for this the 
coal is pushed or allowed to slide down to the foot 
of the chamber. Chambers are often driven up 
obliquely in order to reduce the grade, or are 
curved in their course for the same reason. 

When, on account of the steepness of pitch or 
a change in the direction of the gangway, or for 
any other reason, one set of parallel chambers is 



104 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

brought to a close, a new set is begun farther 
along with a different course. 

The direction in which a gangway, airway, or 
chamber is to be driven is fixed by the mine boss. 
His bearings are obtained with a small miner's 
compass* and he marks on the roof, near the face of 
the opening, a chalk line in the direction desired. 
The miner, sighting back on this line, is thus able 
to take his course and to keep his opening straight. 

Sets of chambers similar to those described are 
driven up from the gangway along its entire 
length. This length may be limited by various 
causes. A boundary line of property, a fault, a 
thinning out of the coal seam, are some of them. 
They are usually driven, however, as far as strict 
principles of economy will allow. A gangway 
that requires no timbering and is easily kept in 
good working condition may be driven to a dis- 
tance of three or four miles. But where these 
conditions are reversed, a mile may be as great a 
distance as coal can be hauled through with econ- 
omy. Beyond that limit it will be cheaper to 
sink a new shaft or slope than to increase the dis- 
tance for underground haulage. 

As the main gangway progresses inward it may 
separate into two branches, each following a de- 
pression in the coal seam, and these branches may 
separate into others ; so that there may be a num- 
ber of gangways all keeping the same general 
level ? from each of which sets of chambers are 



A PLAN OF A COAL MINE. 105 

driven. When the chambers tributary to a gang- 
way have reached their limit of length, and there 
is still an area of coal above them to be mined, 
a new gangway is opened along the faces of the 
chambers, or is driven just above them in the 
solid coal, and from this, which is called a 
"counter-gangway," new sets of chambers are 
driven up the seam. It is often necessary to raise 
and lower cars passing from one gangway to the 
other on an inclined plane, on which the loaded 
cars, descending, and attached to one end of a rope, 
pull up the light cars, ascending and attached to 
the other end, the rope itself winding around a 
revolving drum at the head of the plane. This 
system can be put into use on any incline where 
the gradient is one in thirty, or steeper. 

By this general system of gangways, counter- 
gangways, airways, chambers, and planes, the area 
of coal lying on the upper side of the main gang- 
way and on both sides of the shaft is mined out, 
hauled by mules to the foot of the shaft, and raised 
to the surface. On long straight gangways the 
mule is sometimes replaced by a small mine loco- 
motive, and in these later days the electric engine 
has been introduced into the mines as a hauling 
agent. 

So far, however, in this mine which we are sup- 
posed to be working, not a tap of a drill nor a 
blow of a pick has been made into the coal on the 
lower side of the gangway save where the sump 



106 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

was excavated at the foot of the shaft. If this 
shaft has been sunk nearly to the bottom of the 
basin or synclinal axis, a short tunnel may be 
driven from the main gangway through the rock 
or upper bench of coal across the valley to the rise 
of the seam on the other side. A new gangway 
may here be driven right and left, and this area of 
coal be made tributary to the shaft already sunk. 
It often happens that a large body of coal lies be- 
tween the main gangway and the synclinal axis, 
for these two lines may diverge greatly as they 
recede from the shaft. But chambers cannot be 
driven down from the main gangway owing to the 
difficulties of transportation and drainage. It 
therefore becomes necessary, in order to work this 
area, to sink a slope from the main gangway down 
to or toward the synclinal axis, and from the foot 
of this slope to drive a new gangway. From this 
new gangway chambers will be opened extending 
up the seam to the line of the main gangway, but 
not generally breaking through into it. The coal 
is run down to the lower level gangway, hauled to 
the foot of the slope, and hoisted up it to the main 
gangway. It is apparent, however, that the in- 
clined plane system cannot work here ; the condi- 
tions are reversed ; the loaded cars are drawn up 
and the light ones are let down. To do this work 
it is necessary to bring into use a small steam sta- 
tionary engine, or one working by compressed air. 
A common method is to locate the steam engine on 



A PLAN OF A COAL MINE. 107 

the surface vertically above the head of the under- 
ground slope, and to carry power to the sheaves 
below by wire ropes running down through bore 
holes drilled for that purpose. 

The system of slope mining by lifts, which is in 
common use in the Middle and Southern anthra- 
cite districts, has been explained in a preceding 
chapter. In this system the sump is always made 
by extending the slope a short distance below the 
level of the gangway. This gangway is driven 
from the foot of the slope to the right and left in 
the same manner as in the Wyoming region, ex- 
cept that, the seam being so greatly inclined, 
the gangway roof, or a part of it at least, will 
usually be of coal instead of slate or rock, and in 
very steep pitching seams the airway will be almost 
vertically above the gangway. The gangway is 
not usually so crooked as where the workings are 
flat, and having been started only three hundred 
feet down the slope from the surface, it often fol- 
lows the coal to some low point on the line of out- 
crop, and is then known as a water level gangway, 
which is practically the same as a drift. 

The system of opening and working breasts dif- 
fers somewhat from that in use in the Northern 
field. Beginning at such a distance from the foot 
of the slope as will leave a good thick slope pillar 
for its protection, a narrow shute is driven up from 
the gangway into the coal to a distance of perhaps 
thirty feet, at a height of six feet, and with a 



108 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

width of from six to nine feet. It is then opened 
out to its full width as a breast and continued up 
the seam toward the outcrop, not often breaking 
through to daylight unless an airway or man- 
way is to be made. Parallel breasts are then laid 
off and worked out by the usual pillar and 
breast system. If the dip is less than twelve or 
fifteen degrees, the coal may be run down from 
the working face in a buggy, dumped on to a 
platform or into the shute, and loaded thence into 
a mine car standing on the gangway. If the dip 
is more than fifteen degrees the pieces of coal 
will slide down the breast to the shute, though 
if it is under twenty-five or thirty degrees the 
floor of the breast should be laid with sheet iron 
to lessen the friction and give greater facility in 
movement. In a steep-pitching breast a plank 
partition is built across the shute just above the 
gangway, to hold back the coal until it is desired 
to load a car with it. This partition is called a 
" battery," or, if there is a similar partition to hold 
the coal in the breast, a " check battery." In this 
partition there is an opening through which the 
coal may be drawn when desired, and through 
which the men may also go to their work, though 
a separate manway is often provided. In these 
steep-pitching breasts the miner works by stand- 
ing on the coal which he has already mined, and 
which is held back by the battery, in order to 
reach the uncut coal above him. There are vari- 



A PLAN OF A COAL MINE. 109 

oris systems of shutes, batteries, man ways, etc., in 
use, but all are based on the same principles. 

When the gangway of the first lift has reached 
its limit in both directions, and the breasts from it 
have been worked up to their limit, the slope is 
sunk to another distance of three hundred feet, 
and the process is repeated. From the gangway 
of the second lift the breasts are not extended up 
far enough to break through into the gangway 
above ; a wall of coal is left between that gang- 
way and the faces of the breasts, from fifteen to 
forty feet in thickness, known as the "chain-pillar." 
This is for the protection of the upper gangway 
against falls and crushes, and is also necessary to 
hold back water from escaping into the lower level. 
These lifts will continue, at distances of about 
three hundred feet apart, until the synclinal valley 
is reached. 

When the method of opening the mine by a 
shaft is employed in these steep-pitching seams, 
the shaft is sunk to the lowest level, and the suc- 
cessive sets of gangways and breasts are laid off as 
the work progresses upwards ; that is, the slope 
method of extending the lifts downwards is simply 
reversed. 

The method of mining by tunnel and drift, and 
by slope in the flat workings, is not different from 
the method already described for shafts. So soon 
as the drift, tunnel, or slope has extended far 
enough into the coal seam it becomes a gangway, 



110 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

chambers are laid off from it, and mining goes on 
in the familiar mode. 

Various modifications of the pillar and breast 
system are employed in the anthracite coal mines, 
but no system is in use which is radically dif- 
ferent. 

In the "long wall system," common in Great 
Britain, and used to some extent in the bituminous 
mines of Pennsylvania and the Western States, the 
process of cutting coal is carried on simultaneously 
along an extended face. The roof is allowed to 
fall, back of the workers, roads being preserved 
to the gangway, and the roof at the face is tempo- 
rarily supported by an abundance of wooden props. 

The descriptions of underground workings that 
have now been given have, of necessity, been very 
general in their character. It is impossible, in a 
limited space, to describe the various methods and 
modifications of methods which are in use. No 
two mines, even in the same district, are .worked 
exactly alike. Sometimes they differ widely in 
plan and operation. That system must be em- 
ployed in each one which will best meet its pecul- 
iar requirements. There is large scope here for 
the play of inventive genius. There is scarcely a 
mine of any importance in the entire coal region 
in which one cannot find some new contrivance, 
some ingenious scheme, some masterpiece of inven- 
tion devised to meet some special emergency which 
may have arisen for the first time in the history of 



A PLAN OF A COAL MINE. Ill 



mining. Yet the general features of all coal min- 
ing methods must of necessity be the same in 
underground workings. No one reasonably fa- 
miliar with them could ever mistake a map of a 
coal mine for a map of anything else under the 
sun. 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE MINER AT WORK. 



The number of persons employed in a single 
mine in the anthracite regions varies from a dozen 
in the newest and smallest mines to seven hundred 
or eight hundred in the largest and busiest. The 
average would probably be between two hundred 
and three hundred. In the bituminous districts 
the average is not so large. 

First among those who go down into the mine 
is the mine boss, or, as he is sometimes called, the 
" inside boss." It is his duty " to direct and gen- 
erally supervise the whole working of the mine." 
All the workmen are under his control, and every- 
thing is done in obedience to his orders. He 
reports to, and receives instructions from, the 
general superintendent of the mines. 

Next in authority is the fire boss. It is his duty 
to examine, every morning before the men come 
to their work, every place in the mine where ex- 
plosive gas is evolved or likely to be evolved, and 
to give the necessary instructions to the workmen 
regarding the same. He also has general over- 
sight of the ventilating system, and sees that all 
stoppings, doors, brattices, and airways are kept 



THE MINER AT WORK. 113 

in proper condition. The driver boss has charge 
of the driver boys and door boys, and sees that the 
mules are properly cared for and are not abused. 
Each driver boy has charge of a mule, and the 
mule draws the empty cars in along the gangway 
and up to the faces of the chambers, and draws 
the loaded cars out to the foot of the shaft. The 
door boy must stay at his post all day and open 
and close the door for the cars to pass in and out. 
The use and necessity of these doors will be ex- 
plained in a subsequent chapter. Then there are 
the footmen, carpenters, blacksmiths, masons, and 
tracklayers, whose occupations in the mines are 
apparent from the names which indicate their sev- 
eral callings. 

Finally we have the miners and the miners' 
laborers, and it now becomes a matter of especial 
interest to inquire into the character of their work 
and their manner of performing it. To drive a 
gangway or airway is much the same as driving a 
chamber, except that the gangway is only about 
one third the width of a chamber, and must be 
driven on a slightly ascending grade. Gangway 
driving is special work, for which the miner re- 
ceives special wages, it being impossible in this 
work to send out as much coal with the same 
amount of labor as can be sent out in chamber 
work. And since the great bulk of coal is taken 
from the chambers, it will be better to observe 
in one of them the processes of mining. 



114 



COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 



There are usually four workmen, two miners 
and two laborers, employed in each chamber. 
The miners are employed by, or are under contract 
with, the coal company, and the laborers are em- 
ployed by the miners, subject to the approval of the 
mining superintendent. The two miners divide 
their profits or wages equally with each other, and 
are called "butties." A miner's butty is the man 
who works the chamber with him on halves. A 
laborer's butty is the man who is associated with 
him in the employ of the same miners. Between 
the miner and the laborer there is a well-defined 
and strictly observed line of social demarcation. 
The miner belongs to the aristocracy of under- 
ground workers ; the laborer is of a lower order, 
whose great ambition it is to be elevated, at an early 
day, to that height on which his employer stands. 

Now as to the work done by these four men. 
Before the chamber has progressed a pillar's 
length above the airway, propping will usually be 
necessary to sustain the roof, so large an area of 
which has been left without support. Hardwood 
props about nine inches in diameter are used for 
the purpose. They are purchased by the mining 
companies in large quantities, and are usually cut 
and hauled to the railroad in the winter time to be 
shipped at any season to the mines. By the law 
of 1885 the person or company operating a mine 
is obliged to furnish to the miner, at the face of 
his chamber, as many props of the required length 



THE MINER AT WORK. 115 

as he may need, Having received the props the 
miner himself sets them on each side of the mid- 
dle line of the chamber at such points as he thinks 
require them, or at such points as the mine boss 
designates. He drives the prop to its place by 
means of a large flat wedge inserted between the 
top of it and the roof, thus making the stick tight 
and firm and also giving it a larger bearing 
against the roof. Some chambers require very 
few props ; others must be well lined with them. 
Their necessity depends upon the character of the 
roof. If it is soft, slaty, and loose it must be sup- 
ported at frequent intervals. It very rarely occurs 
that a chamber, worked to its limit, has needed 
no propping from its foot to its face. Usually a 
good part of the miner's time is occupied in setting 
props as his work at the face advances. 

Every seam has its top and bottom bench of coal, 
divided about midway by a thin slate partition, 
and one bench is always taken out to a horizontal 
depth of four or five feet before the other one is 
mined. If the upper bench contains the best and 
cleanest coal, with the smoothest plane of cleavage 
at the roof, that is first taken out ; but if the choice 
coal lies at the bottom, then the lower bench is 
first mined. The reason for this is that a shot 
heavy enough to blast out effectually the section of 
rough, bony, or slaty coal which sticks to the roof 
or floor would be heavy enough to shatter the ad- 
joining bench of clean brittle coal, and make a 
large part of it so fine as to be useless. 



116 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

Let us now suppose that the miner has a clean, 
vertical wall of coal at the face of his chamber in 
which to begin work. Making sure that his tools 
and materials are all at hand, he first takes up his 
drill. This is a round or hexagonal iron bar about 
one and an eighth inches in diameter, and about 
five and a half feet long, tipped at the working 
end with steel. This end is flattened out into a 
blade or chisel, having a slight concave curve on 
its edge, and being somewhat wider at its extrem- 
ity than the diameter of the bar. At the other 
end of the drill the diameter is increased to one 
and a half inches, forming a circular ridge at the 
extremity of the bar, in one side of which ridge 
a semicircular notch is cut into the face of the 
drill. The use of this notch will be subsequently 
explained. This, then, is the tool with which the 
miner begins his work. Selecting the bench to 
be first mined he chooses a point a few feet to the 
right or left of the middle line of the face -and de- 
livers upon it the first stroke with the sharp edge 
of his drill ; and as he strikes successive blows he 
rotates the drill in his hands in order to make the 
hole round. The drill is never struck on the head 
with sledges. Its cutting force depends on the 
momentum given to it in the hands of the miner, 
and the stroke made by it is a jumping or elastic 
stroke. 

Instead of the bar drill, which has been de- 
scribed, many of the miners use a machine hand- 



THE MINER AT WORK. 117 

drill for boring holes. This machine works upon 
the same principle that the jackscrew does. It 
is operated by hand by means of a crank, and an 
auger-like projection forces its way into the coal. 
The work of turning the crank is more laborious 
than that of drilling with the bar-drill, but the 
extra labor is much more than compensated for 
by the greater speed at which boring is done. It 
is probably due to the spirit of conservatism 
among miners that this machine is not in general 
use by them. Coal-cutting machines, working by 
steam or compressed air, are not used in the an- 
thracite mines. The character of the coal, the 
thickness of the seams, and the inclination of the 
strata make their employment impracticable. 

When the hole has been drilled to a depth of 
about four and a half feet it is carefully cleaned 
out with a scraper. This is a light iron rod with 
a handle on one end of it and a little spoon, turned 
up like a mustard spoon, on the other end. Then 
the cartridge is inserted and pushed in to the 
farther extremity of the hole. The cartridge is 
simply a tube made of heavy manila paper formed 
over a cartridge stick, filled with black powder, 
and folded at the ends. Dynamite and other high 
explosives are not used, because they create too 
much waste. Eeady-made cartridges in jointed 
sections are largely used, but as a rule the miner 
makes his own cartridge as he needs it. 

The miner's needle is an iron rod about five and 



118 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

one half feet in length, with a handle at one end. 
It is about five eighths of an inch in diameter at 
the handle end, and tapers to a point at the other 
end. When the cartridge has been pushed in to 
the extreme end of the bore hole, the needle is in- 
serted also, the point of it piercing the outer end 
of the cartridge. The needle is then allowed to 
rest on the bottom or at the side of the drill hole 
while the miner gathers fine dirt from the floor 
of the mine, dampens it slightly if it is dry, and 
pushes it into the hole alongside. This dirt is 
then forced in against the cartridge with the head 
of the drill. More dirt is put in and driven home, 
and still more, until, by the time the hole is filled 
to its outer extremity, the packing is hard and 
firm. This process is called tamping. It can now 
be seen that the semicircular notch on the rim of 
the blunt end of the drill is for the purpose of 
allowing the drill to slip along over the needle, 
which still retains its position, and at the same 
time to fill the diameter of the hole. The tamp- 
ing being finished the miner takes hold of the 
needle by the handle, turns it once or twice gently 
in its bed, and then slowly withdraws it. A round, 
smooth channel is thus left from the outside di- 
rectly in to the powder of the cartridge, and into 
this channel the squib is inserted. The squib is 
simply an elongated fire-cracker. It has about the 
diameter of a rye straw, is about four inches in 
length, and its covering projects an inch or two at 



THE MINER AT WORK. 119 

one end and is twisted up for a fuse* The cover- 
ing of the squib may indeed be of straw, some- 
times it is of hempen material, but more often, in 
these days, it is made of paper. It is filled with 
powder and is then dipped into a resinous mixture 
to make it water-proof, to coat over the open end 
so that the powder shall not run out, and to make 
the wick at the other end mildly inflammable. If 
the bore hole should be very wet an iron or copper 
tube, through which the needle is run, is laid to 
the cartridge before the hole is tamped, and when 
the needle is withdrawn the squib is inserted into 
the mouth of the tube* If inflammable gases are 
exuding from the coal through the bore hole, or if 
for any other reason it is feared that the cartridge 
will be exploded too quickly, a short piece of cot- 
ton wick, dipped in oil, is attached to the fuse of 
the squib to lengthen it, and this extra section of 
fuse is allowed to hang dow r n from the mouth of 
the bore hole against the face of coaL 

When all is ready the tools are removed to a 
safe distance, a lighted lamp is touched to the 
fuse, the men cry u Fire ! " to warn all who may be 
in the vicinity, and, retreating down the chamber, 
they take refuge behind some convenient pillar. 
The fuse burns so slowly that the men have ample 
time in w 7 hich to get out of harm's way, if ordi- 
nary care is taken. When the fire reaches the 
powder in the squib the same force that propels a 
fire-cracker or a rocket acts upon the squib and 



120 COAL AND THE COAL MINES, 

sends it violently through the channel or tube into 
contact with the powder of the cartridge. The 
explosion that results throws out a section of coal 
from the face, breaking it into large pieces. So 
soon as the place has settled after the firing of the 
shot the men go back to the face to note the result. 
The broken coal is pushed to one side, and prep- 
arations are made for drilling the next hole. It 
usually takes five shots to break down a single 
bench. When both benches of coal have been 
blasted out the length of the chamber has been in- 
creased by five or six feet. In blasting, the miner 
must take advantage of such conditions as are pre- 
sented to him at the face of the working, and he 
will bore his hole and fire his shot where, in his 
judgment, the best result w 7 ill be attained. He 
cannot always take one position at his drilling ; it 
is rarely that he finds a comfortable one. Some- 
times he must hold the drill at arm's length above 
his head, at other times he must rest on his knees 
while working, still oftener he is obliged to lie on 
his back or side on the wet floor of the mine, and 
work in that position, with occasional resjjite, for 
hours at a time. 

In nearly every chamber the miner has a powder 
chest which he keeps locked, and which is stored 
at some safe and convenient place, not too close 
to the face. In this chest he keeps, besides his 
powder, his cartridge paper, cartridge pin, squibs, 
lamp-wick, chalk, and such other little conven- 



THE MINER AT WORK. 121 

iences and necessaries as every workingman must 
have at hand. The other tools are usually at the 
face. He has there a mining pick. This pick is 
straight and pointed, and from the head or eye, 
where the handle enters, it will measure about 
nine inches to each end. It is used for bringing 
down slate and coal from roof, ribs, and face. The 
bottom pick is used by the laborer for breaking 
up the coal after it is down. This pick measures 
about two feet from tip to tip, and is curved 
slightly upward at the points. Each miner has 
two drills, and perhaps a hand machine-drill. He 
has also a steel crowbar for prying down loose 
portions of the roof, and for turning heavy pieces 
of slate or coal. He has an eight-pound steel 
hammer, with a handle two feet and four inches in 
length, which he uses in setting props ; and he has 
a heavy sledge for breaking rock and coal. The 
list is completed by three large scoop shovels, used 
generally to shovel the smaller pieces of broken 
coal from the floor of the chamber into the mine 
car. 

The miner must furnish his own tools. His 
powder, fuse, and oil he gets from the company 
that employs him, and they are charged to him in 
the account that is stated between them monthly. 
It will not do to omit the miner's lamp from the 
list of appliances used in his calling; it is too 
great a necessity. Without it he could do abso- 
lutely nothing ; he could not even find his way to 



122 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

his chamber. Formerly candles were much used 
in the mines ; in Great Britain they are still com- 
mon ; but the anthracite miner invariably uses a 
lamp. This is a round, flat-bottomed tin box, 
about the size of a small after-dinner coffee cup. 
It has a hinged lid on top, a spout on one side, 
and a handle shaped like a hook with the point 
down on the opposite side. By this hooked 
handle the lamp is fastened to the front of the 
miner's cap, and he wears it so at his labor, re- 
moving it only for the purpose of renewing the 
material in it, or of approaching the powder chest, 
or of examining more closely some portion of his 
work. In the lamp he burns crude petroleum, 
which is fed from a cotton wick emerging from the 
spout. Very recently electricity has been intro- 
duced into the gangways of some large mines, for 
lighting purposes, and has given great satisfac- 
tion. Perhaps the day is not far distant when an 
electric light will swing from the roof at the face 
of every working chamber. 

When the coal has been blasted down and the 
props have been set the miner's work is done ; the 
rest belongs to the laborers. They must break up 
the coal, load it into the cars, run it down to the 
gangway, pile up the refuse, and clear the chamber 
for the next day's work. The mine carpenters 
have laid a track, consisting of wooden rails set 
into caps or notched ties, as far up the chamber as 
the working at the face would permit. Up this 



CARTRIDGE PIN 




I 



I 



MINER'S TOOLS. 



THE MINER AT WORK. 123 

track the mule and driver boy have brought the 
empty car and left it at the face. The labor- 
ers throw into it first the smaller pieces of coal 
which they shovel up from the floor of the cham- 
ber, then huge chunks are tumbled in and piled 
skillfully on top until the car is almost overbal- 
anced with its load. It is then pushed out to the 
gangway to await the coming of the driver boy, 
who attaches it to his trip of loads and takes ifc to 
the shaft. 

The mine car is usually but a smaller edition of 
the coal cars that can be seen any day on the sur- 
face railways of the country. The running por- 
tion is of iron, and the box is stoutly built of hard- 
wood, braced and stiffened by iron tie-rods, bolts, 
and shoes. At the end of the car is a vertical 
swinging door, hung from the top by an iron rod, 
which crosses the box. This door is latched on 
the outside near the bottom, and the coal is 
dumped from the car by tipping it up and letting 
the unlatched door swing outward. The size of 
the car depends greatly on the size and character 
of the workings in which it is used. Perhaps an 
average size would be ten feet long, five feet wide, 
and five feet high from the rail. Such a car would 
contain about one hundred cubic feet, and would 
hold from two and one half to three tons of coal. 
The track gauges in common use vary by three inch 
widths from two feet and six inches to four feet. 
The miner and laborer start to their work in the 



124 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

morning at six o'clock. If they enter the mine by 
shaft they must go down before seven o'clock, for 
at that hour the engineer stops lowering men and 
begins to hoist coal. Immediately after arriving 
at the face of his chamber the miner begins to cut 
coal. If the vein is thick and clean, if his shots 
are all effective, and if he has good luck generally, 
he will cut his allowance of coal for the day by ten 
or eleven o'clock in the forenoon. It will be 
understood that by the system in use by most of 
,the coal companies not more than a certain num- 
ber of carloads may be sent out from each chamber 
per day. And when the miner has blasted down 
enough coal to make up that number of loads his 
day's work is done. It is very seldom indeed that 
he is not through before two o'clock in the after- 
noon. But he never stays to assist the laborer. 
It is beneath his dignity as a miner to help break 
up and loah the coal which has been brought 
down by means of his judgment and skill. " So the 
laborer is always last in the chamber. His work 
is seldom done before four or five o'clock in the 
afternoon. He has just so much coal to break 
up, load, and push clown to the gangway, no mat- 
ter how successful the miner may have been. He 
consoles himself, however, by looking forward to 
the time when he shall himself become a miner. 

Blasting is always a dangerous occupation, and 
the law in Pennsylvania, embodied in the act of 
1885, has recognized its especial danger in the 



THE MINER AT WORK. 125 

mines, by making certain provisions concerning 
it for the protection of life and limb. The rules 
laid down are strict and complete, yet, in spite of 
them, accidents from powder explosions and pre- 
mature blasts are frequent and destructive. But 
it must be said that these accidents are due, in 
most part, to violations of these rules. It is im- 
possible for colliery authorities to keep constant 
watch over the workmen in every chamber. The 
conduct of these men must be largely governed by 
themselves, and the frequency of accidents, both 
serious and fatal, as a result of carelessness on the 
part of workmen, does not seem to deter other 
workmen from constantly running the same risks. 
The most prevalent and the most serious source of 
danger to the miner is not, however, in blasting, 
but in falls of coal, slate, and rock from the roof, 
ribs, and face of the chamber. Material that has 
become loosened by blasting is pulled down care- 
lessly, or falls without warning. In many cases 
the roof is insufficiently propped, and large sec- 
tions of it give way. Men are caught under these 
falling masses every day, and are either killed 
outright or seriously injured. Yet, as in the case 
of blasting, their injuries are largely the result of 
their own carelessness. Any one who reads the 
reports of these cases cannot fail to be convinced 
of this fact. The mine inspector's reports of 
Pennsylvania show that during the year 1887 
there were in the anthracite district three hun- 



126 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

dred and thirteen fatal accidents which occurred 
in and about the mines. Of this number one hun- 
dred and forty-seven were due to falls of roof and 
coal, while only twenty-one were caused by explo- 
sions of blasting material. These figures indicate 
plainly the direction in which the skill and super- 
vision of operators and the care and watchfulness 
of workmen should be exerted for the protection 
of life. 



CHAPTER X. 

WHEN THE MINE ROOF FALLS. 

A first visit to a coal mine will be prolific of 
strange sights and sounds and of novel sensations. 
If one enters the mine by a shaft, the first note- 
worthy experience will be the descent on the 
cage or carriage. The visitor will probably be 
under the care of one of the mine foremen, with- 
out whose presence or authority he would not be 
allowed to descend, and indeed would not wish to. 
From the head to the foot of every shaft a speak- 
ing tube extends, and signaling apparatus, which 
is continued to the engine-room. These appliances 
are required by law. In these days the signals are 
often operated by electricity. At the head of the 
shaft is stationed a headman and at the foot of the 
shaft a footman, whose assistants aid in pushing 
cars on and off the carriages. The footman is 
notified of your coming, and you take your place 
on the empty safety carriage. It swings slightly 
as you step on to it, just enough to make you real- 
ize that you have passed from the stable to the un- 
stable, and that besides the few inches of planking 
under your feet, there is nothing between you and 
the floor of the mine, five hundred feet or more 



128 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

below you. When all is ready the foreman cries : 
" Slack off ! " the signal to the engineer is given, 
the carriage is slightly raised, the wings are with- 
drawn, and the descent begins. If the carriage 
goes down as rapidly as it ordinarily does your 
first sensation will be that of falling. It will seem 
as though that on which you were standing has 
been suddenly removed from beneath your feet, 
and your impulse will be to grasp for something 
above you. You will hardly have recovered from 
this sensation when it will seem to you that the 
motion of the carriage has been reversed, and that 
you are now going up more rapidly than you were 
at first descending. There will be an alternation 
of these sensations during the minute or two oc- 
cupied in the descent, until finally the motion of 
the carriage becomes suddenly slower, and you feel 
it strike gently at the bottom of the shaft. As 
you step out into the darkness nothing is visible 
to you except the shifting flames of the workmen's 
lamps ; you cannot even see distinctly the men 
who carry them. You are given a seat on the 
footman's bench near by until your eyes have ac- 
commodated themselves to the situation. After 
a few minutes you are able to distinguish objects 
that are ten or fifteen feet away. You can see 
through the murky atmosphere the rough walls of 
solid coal about you, the flat, black, moist roof 
overhead, the mine car tracks at your feet. The 
carriages appear and disappear, and are loaded 



WHEN THE MINE ROOF FALLS. 129 

and unloaded at the foot of the shaft, while the 
passage, at one side of which you sit, is filled with 
mine cars, mules, and driver boys in apparently 
inextricable confusion. The body of a mule 
looms up suddenly in front of you ; you catch a 
glimpse of a boy hurrying by ; a swarthy face, 
lighted up by the flame of a lamp gleams out of 
the darkness, but the body that belongs to it is 
in deep shadow, you cannot see it. Bare, brawny 
arms become visible and are withdrawn, men's 
voices sound strange, there is a constant rumbling 
of cars, a regular clicking sound as the carriage 
stops and starts, incessant shouting by the boys ; 
somewhere the sound of falling water. Such are 
the sights and sounds at the shaft's foot. If now 
you pass in along the gangway, you will be apt to 
throw the light of your lamp to your feet to see 
where you are stepping. You will experience a 
sense of confinement in the narrow passage with 
its low roof and close, black walls. Occasionally 
you will have to crowd against the rib to let a trip 
of mine cars, drawn by a smoking mule, in charge 
of a boy with soiled face and greasy clothes, pass 
by. Perhaps you walk up one of the inclined 
planes to a counter gangway. You are lucky if 
you are in a mine where the roof is so high that 
you need not bend over as you walk. The men 
whom you meet have little lamps on their caps, 
smoking and flaring in the strong air current. 
You can see little of these persons except their 



130 



COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 



soiled faces. Everything here is black and dingy ; 
there is no color relief to outline the form of any 
object. Now you come to a door on the upper 
side of the gangway, A small boy jumps up from 
a bench and pulls the door open for the party to 
pass through. As it closes behind you the strong 
current of air nearly extinguishes your lamp. You 
walk along the airway for a little distance, and 
then you come to the foot of a chamber. Up 
somewhere in the darkness, apparently far away, 
you see lights twinkling, four of them. They 
appear and disappear, they bob up and down, they 
waver from side to side, till you wonder what 
strange contortions the people who carry them must 
be going through to give them such erratic move- 
ments. By and by there is a cry of " Fire ! " the 
cry is repeated several times, three lights move 
down the chamber toward you and suddenly dis- 
appear, then the fourth one approaches apparently 
with more action, and disappears also. The men 
who carry them have hidden behind pillars. You 
wait one, two, three minutes, looking into dark- 
Then there is a sudden wave-like movement 



ness. 



in the air ; it strikes your face, you feel it in your 
ears ; the flame of your lamp is blown aside. Im- 
mediately there is the sound of an explosion and 
the crash of falling blocks of coal. The waves of 
disturbed air still touch your face gently. Soon 
the lights reappear, all four of them, and advance 
toward the face. In a minute they are swallowed 



WHEN THE MINE' ROOF FALLS. 131 

up in the powder smoke that has rolled out from 
the blast ; you see only a faint blur, and their move- 
ments are indistinct. But when the smoke has 
reached and passed you the air is clearer again, and 
the lights twinkle and dance as merrily as they did 
before the blast was fired. Now you go up the 
chamber, taking care not to stumble over the high 
caps, into the notches of which the wooden rails of 
the track are laid. On one side of you is a wall, 
built up with pieces of slate and bony coal and the 
refuse of the mine, on the other you can reach out 
your hand and touch the heavy wooden props that 
support the roof, and beyond the props there is 
darkness, or if the rib of coal is visible it is barely 
distinct. Up at the face there is a scene of great 
activity. Bare-armed men, without coat or vest, 
are working with bar and pick and shovel, moving 
the fallen coal from the face, breaking it, loading 
it into the mine car which stands near by. The 
miners are at the face prying down loose pieces of 
coal. One takes his lamp in his hand and flashes 
its light along the black, broken, shiny surface, 
deciding upon the best point to begin the next 
drill hole, discussing the matter with his com- 
panion, giving quick orders to the laborers, acting 
with energy and a will. He takes up his drill, 
runs his fingers across the edge of it profession- 
ally, balances it in his hands, and strikes a certain 
point on the face with it, turning it slightly at 
each stroke. He has taken his position, lying on 



132 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

his side perhaps, and then begins the regular tap, 
tap, of the drill into the eoal. The laborers have 
loaded the mine car, removed the block from the 
wheel, and now, grasping the end of it firmly, hold 
back on it as it moves by gravity down the cham- 
ber to the gangway. You may follow it out, watch 
the driver boy as he attaches it to his trip, and go 
with him back to the foot of the shaft. 

You have seen something of the operation of 
taking out coal, something of the ceaseless activity 
which pervades the working portions of the mine. 
But your visit to the mine has been at a time when 
hundreds of men are busy around you, when the 
rumble, the click, the tap, the noise of blasting, 
the sound of human voices, are incessant. If you 
were there alone, the only living being in the 
mine, you would experience a different set of sen- 
sations. If you stood or sat motionless you would 
find the silence oppressive. One who has not had 
this experience can have no adequate conception of 
the profound stillness of a deserted mine. On the 
surface of the earth one cannot find a time nor a 
place in which the ear is not assailed by noises ; 
the stirring of the grasses in the field at mid- 
night sends sound-waves traveling through space. 
Wherever there is life there is motion, and wher- 
ever there is motion there is sound. But down 
here there is no life, no motion, no sound. The 
silence is not only oppressive, it is painful, it be- 
comes unbearable. No person could be long sub- 



WHEN THE MINE ROOF FALLS. 133 

jected to it and retain his reason ; it would be like 
trying to live in an element to which the human 
body is not adapted. Suppose you are not only in 
silence but in darkness. There is no darkness on 
the surface of the earth that is at all comparable 
with the darkness of the mine. On the surface the 
eyes can grow accustomed to the deepest gloom of 
night. Clouds cannot shut out every ray of light 
from hidden moon or stars. But down in the 
mine, whether in night-time or daytime, there is no 
possible lightening up of the gloom by nature ; she 
cannot send her brightest sunbeam through three 
hundred feet of solid rock. If one is in the mines 
without a light, he has before him, behind him, 
everywhere, utter blackness. To be lost in this 
way, a mile from any opening tofday, in the midst 
of a confusion of galleries, in an abandoned mine, 
and to be compelled to feel one's way to safety, is a 
painful experience, is one indeed which the writer 
himself has had. 

There conies a time in the history of every mine 
when it is pervaded only by silence and darkness. 
All the coal that can be carried from it by the 
shaft or slope or other outlet has been mined and 
taken out, and the place is abandoned. But be- 
fore this comes to pass the work of robbing the 
pillars must be done. This work consists in break- 
ing from the pillars as much coal as can possibly 
be taken without too great risk to the workmen. 
The process is begun at the faces of the chambers, 



134 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

at the farthest extremity of the mine, and the 
work progresses constantly toward the shaft or 
other opening by which the coal thus obtained is 
taken out. It can readily be seen that robbing 
pillars is a dangerous business. For so soon as the 
column becomes too slender to support the roof it 
will give way and the slate and rock will come 
crashing down into the chamber. The workmen 
must be constantly on the alert, watchful for every 
sign of danger, but at the best some will be in- 
jured, some will perhaps be killed, by the falling 
masses from the roof. Yet this work must be 
done, otherwise coal mining would not be profit- 
able, the waste would be too great. The coal that 
can be taken out under the prevailing systems 
will average only fifty per cent, of the whole body 
in the mine, and at least ten per cent, more will 
be lost in waste at the breaker, so that it behooves 
a company to have its pillars robbed as closely as 
possible. It is after all this has been done, and 
all tools and appliances have been removed from 
the mine, that it is abandoned. Perhaps the lower 
levels of it become filled with water. It is a waste 
of crushed pillars, fallen rock, and blocked pas- 
sages. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive of any- 
thing more weird and desolate than an abandoned 
mine. To walk or climb or creep through one is 
like walking with Dante through the regions of 
the lost. There are masses of rock piled up in 
great confusion to the jagged roof, dull surfaces of 



WHEN THE MINE ROOF FALLS. 135 

coal and slate, rotting timbers patched here and 
there with spots of snow-white fungus, black 
stretches of still water into which a bit of falling 
slate or coal will strike and send a thousand 
echoes rattling through the ghostly chambers. 
For a noise which on the surface of the earth will 
not break the quiet of a summer night, down here 
will almost make your heart stand still with fear, 
so startling is it in distinctness, 

But it is not only in abandoned mines that falls 
of roof take place, nor yet alone at the unpropped 
face of breast or gangway. They are liable to 
occur at almost any point in any mine. Some- 
times only a small piece of slate, not larger per- 
haps than a shia.gle, will come down ; again the 
roof of an entire chamber will falL It is possible 
that two or more chambers will be involved in the 
disturbance, and instances occasionally occur in a 
working mine where a fall covers an area many 
acres in extent. The falls that are limited in ex- 
tent, that are confined to a single chamber or the 
face of a chamber, do not interfere with the pillars 
and can be readily cleared away. They are due 
to lack of support for the roof, to insufficient 
propping and injudicious blasting, and may, to a 
great extent, be guarded against successfully by 
care and watchfulness. But to foresee or prevent 
the more extended falls is often impossible. They 
are due to the general pressure of overlying strata 
over a considerable area 5 and both props and pil- 



136 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

lars give way under so great a strain. Some- 
times they come without a moment's warning ; 
usually, however, their approach is indicated by 
unmistakable signs days or even weeks in advance 
of the actual fall. There will be cracks in the 
roof, small pieces of slate will drop to the floor, 
the distance between floor and roof will grow per- 
ceptibly less, pillars will bulge in the middle and 
little fragments of coal not larger than peas will 
break from them with a crackling sound and fall 
to the floor, until a deposit of fine coal is thus 
formed at the base of each pillar in the infected 
district. This crackling and falling is known as 
" working," and this general condition is called a 
" crush " or a " squeeze." If one stands quite still 
in a section of a mine where there is a squeeze, he 
will hear all about him, coming from the " work- 
ing " pillars, these faint crackling noises, like the 
snapping of dry twigs under the feet. Sometimes 
the floor of underclay or the roof of shale is. so soft 
that the pillar, instead of bulging or breaking, 
enters the strata above or below as the roof settles. 
When this occurs it is called " creeping." In the 
steep-pitching veins the tendency of the pillars on 
the approach of a squeeze is to " slip," that is, to 
move perceptibly down the incline. When these 
indications occur the workmen are withdrawn from 
the portion of the mine which is " working," and 
vigorous measures are taken to counteract the 
pressure, by props and other supports placed under 



WEEN THE MINE ROOF FALLS. 137 

the roof. Sometimes this work is effectual, some- 
times it is of no avail whatever. Often the fall 
comes before the first prop can be set ; and when it 
comes the crash is terrible, the destruction is great. 
However, not many feet in thickness of the roof 
strata can come down ; the slate and rock which 
first fall are broken and heaped in such irregular 
masses on the floor that they soon extend up to the 
roof and afford it new and effectual support. It 
is therefore only near the outcrop, or where the 
mine is not deep, that a fall in it disturbs the 
earth at the surface. But in the mining of the 
upper veins such disturbances were frequent. In 
passing through the coal regions one will occasion- 
ally see a depression, or a series of depressions, 
in the earth's surface to which his attention will 
be attracted on account of their peculiar shape. 
They are not often more than ten or fifteen feet in 
depth, and though of irregular outline their approx- 
imate diameter seldom exceeds sixty feet. They 
are the surface indications of a fall in shallow 
mines, and are known as " caves " or " cave holes." 
A section of country one or more acres in extent 
may, however, be so strewn with them as to make 
the land practically valueless. 

When the upper vein in the Wyoming region 
was being mined, buildings on the surface were 
occasionally disturbed by these falls, but not often. 
If houses had been erected over a shallow mine 
before the coal was taken out, strong pillars were 



138 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

left under them to support the roof, and if the 
mining had already been done and the pillars 
robbed, no one would risk the erection of a build- 
ing over a place liable to fall, for these places were 
known, and points above them on the surface 
could be definitely located. Sensational stories 
are sometimes started concerning a mining town 
or city that it is liable any night, while its inhab- 
itants are asleep, to be engulfed in the depths of 
some mine, the vast cavities of which are spread 
out beneath it. It is almost unnecessary to say 
that such dangers are purely imaginary. There is 
probably not a town or city in the mining districts 
so located that a single stone of it in the populated 
portion would be disturbed by a fall in the mines 
underneath it, supposing there were mines under- 
neath it, and that a fall is liable to take place in 
them. The areas of surface which could possibly 
be disturbed by a fall are too limited in extent, 
and are too well known, to make such a -general 
catastrophe at all within the possibilities. The 
mines in the upper coal seams have for the most 
part been worked out and abandoned long ago, and 
the roof rock has settled into permanent position 
and rigidity. In the deep mines of the present 
day no fall, however extensive, could be felt at the 
surface. The broken masses of roof rock that 
come down first would have filled up the cavities 
and supported the strata above them, long before 
any perceptible movement could have reached the 






WHEN THE MINE ROOF FALLS. 139 

surface. The conditions that lead to surface falls 
in the Middle and Southern regions are somewhat 
different from those that prevail in the Wyoming 
field. In the first-mentioned districts steep-pitch- 
ing coal seams are the rule, and they all come to 
the surface in lines of outcrop. In driving breasts 
up from the gangway of the first lfcvel, it is in- 
tended to leave from ten to twelve yards of coal 
between the face of the breast and the outcrop ; 
while over the outcrop will be from twelve to 
twenty feet of soil. Any experienced miner can 
tell when the face of the breast is approaching the 
outcrop ; the coal becomes softer, changes in color, 
breaks into smaller pieces, sometimes water runs 
down through. It is obviously unsafe to erect 
buildings on the line of this outcrop, or immedi- 
ately inside of it, where the roof is thin. There is 
no assurance that the body of coal left will not 
slip down the breast ; and the pillars of coal near 
the surface are so soft that any disturbance of this 
kind may cause them to give way and let down the 
entire thickness of strata above them. This was 
what occurred at the Stockton mines near Hazle- 
ton on December 18, 1869. Two double tene- 
ment houses were situated over the face of a 
worked-out breast, near the outcrop. About five 
o'clock in the morning the roof fell, carrying both 
houses down with it a distance of about eighty feet 
into the old breast. The inhabitants of one of the 
houses escaped from it a moment before it went 




140 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

down, those in the other house, ten in number, 
were carried into the mine, and were killed. The 
buildings in the pit took fire almost immediately, 
and rescue of the bodies crushed there anions' the 
debris was impossible. 

Accidents of this class are happily very rare. 
The exercise of ordinary judgment is sufficient to 
prevent them. The list of disasters due to falls of 
roof at the faces of chambers might, as has already 
been explained, be greatly reduced by the same 
means. But it is often impossible to prevent, or 
even to guard against, those falls which cover a 
large area, though their coming may be heralded 
for days by the working of pillars and all the in- 
dications of a squeeze. This was the case at the 
fall in the Carbondale mines in 1846, one of the 
most extensive falls that has ever been known. It 
covered an area of from forty to fifty acres, four- 
teen persons were killed by it, and the bodies of 
eight of them were never recovered. Although 
this disaster occurred more than forty years ago, 
the writer had the privilege, in the summer of 
1888, of hearing an account of it from one of the 
survivors, Mr. Andrew Bryden. Mr. Bryden is 
now, and has been for many years, one of the gen- 
eral mining superintendents for the Pennsylvania 
Coal Company, with headquarters at Pittston, 
Pennsylvania. His story of the fall is as follows : 
"This disaster occurred on the twelfth day of 
January, 1846, at about eight o'clock in the fore- 







I 



I 









WHEN THE MINE ROOF FALLS. 141 

noon. It was in Drifts No. 1 and No. 2 of the 
Delaware and Hudson Canal Company's mines at 
Carbondale. The part of the mine in which the 
caving in was most serious was on the plane head- 
ing, at the face of which I was at work. We 
heard the fall : it came like a thunderclap. We 
felt the concussion distinctly, and the rush of air 
occasioned by it put out our lights. I and those 
who were working with me knew that the fall had 
come, and we thought it better to try immediately 
to find our way out, although we had no idea that 
the fall had been so extensive or the calamity so 
great. We did not doubt but that we should be 
able to make our way along the faces of the cham- 
bers, next to the solid coal, to an opening at the 
outcrop ; so we relighted our lamps and started. 
We had gone but a little way before we saw the 
effects of the tremendous rush of air. Loaded 
cars had been lifted and thrown from the track, 
and the heavy walls with which entrances were 
blocked had been torn out and the debris scattered 
through the chambers. We began then to believe 
that the fall had been a large one, but before we 
reached the line of it we met a party of twenty-five 
or thirty men. They were much frightened, and 
were running in toward the face of the heading, 
the point from which we had just come. They 
said that the entire mine had caved in ; that the 
fall had extended close up to the faces of the 
chambers along the line of solid coal, leaving no 



142 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

possible means of escape in the direction we were 
going ; and that the only safe place in the entire 
section was the place which we were leaving, at 
the face of the heading. This heading having 
been driven for some distance into the solid coal, 
the fall could not well reach in to the face of it. 
We were greatly discouraged by the news that 
these men told us, and we turned back and went 
with them in to the face of the heading. We had 
little hope of being able to get out through the 
body of the fall, — the way in which we did finally 
escape, — for we knew that the mine had been 
working, and that the roof had been breaking 
down that morning in the lower level. Indeed, we 
could hear it at that moment cracking, crashing, 
and falling with a great noise. We felt that the 
only safe place was at the face of the heading 
where we were, and most of the party clung closely 
to it. Some of us would go out occasionally to the 
last entrance to listen and investigate, but the 
noise of the still falling roof was so alarming that 
no one dared venture farther. After a long time 
spent thus in waiting I suggested that we should 
start out in parties of three or four, so that we 
should not be in each other's way, and so that all 
of us should not be exposed to the same particular 
danger, and try to make our way through the fall. 
But the majority of the men were too much fright- 
ened to accede to this proposition ; they were de- 
termined that we should all remain together. So 



WHEN THE MINE ROOF FALLS. 143 

when some of us started out the whole body rushed 
out after us, and followed along until we came to 
the line of the fall. We had succeeded in pick- 
ing our way but a short distance through the 
fallen portion of the mine when we met my father, 
Alexander Bryden, coming toward us. He was 
foreman of the mine. We heard him calling us 
out before he reached us, and you may be sure that 
no more welcome sound ever struck upon our ears. 
He was outside when the fall came, but the thun- 
der of it had scarcely ceased before he started in 
to learn its extent, and to rescue, if possible, the 
endangered men. He had not gone far when he 
met three men hastening toward the surface, who 
told him how extensive and dreadful the calamity 
had been, and urged him not to imperil his life 
by going farther. But my father was determined 
to go, and he pushed on. He made his way over 
hills of fallen rock, he crawled under leaning slabs 
of slate, he forced his body through apertures 
scarcely large enough to admit it, he hurried under 
hanging pieces of roof that crashed down in his 
path the moment he had passed ; and finally he 
came to us. I have no doubt that he was as glad 
to find us and help us as we were to see him. 
Then he led us back through the terrible path by 
which he had come, and brought us every one be- 
yond the fall to a place of safety. When we were 
there my father asked if any person had been left 
inside. He was told that one, Dennis Farrell, was 






144 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

at the face of his chamber, so badly injured across 
his spine that he could not walk. The miners in 
their retreat to the face of our heading had found 
him lying under a heavy piece of coal. They had 
rolled it off from him, but seeing that he could not 
walk they set him up in the corner of his chamber, 
thinking it might be as safe a place as the one to 
which they were going, and gave him a light and 
left him. My father asked if any one would go 
in with him and help carry Dennis out, but none 
of them dared to go ; it was too dangerous a jour- 
ney. So my father made his way back alone 
through the fallen mine, and found the crippled 
and imprisoned miner. The man was totally help- 
less, and my father lifted him to his back and car- 
ried him as far as he could. He drew him gently 
through the low and narrow passages of the fall, 
he climbed with him over the hills of broken rock, 
and finally he brought him out to where the other 
men were. They carried him to the surface, a mile 
farther, and then to his home. Dennis and his 
brother John were working the chamber together, 
and when the piece of coal fell upon Dennis his 
brother ran into the next chamber for help. He 
had scarcely got into it when the roof of the cham- 
ber fell and buried him, and he was never seen 
again, alive or dead. 

" It was only a little while after we got out be- 
fore the roof fell in on the way we had come and 
closed it up, and it was not opened again for a 



WHEN THE MINE ROOF FALLS. 145 

year afterward. But we knew there were others 
still in the mine, and after we got Farrell out 
my father organized a rescuing party, and kept 
up the search for the imprisoned miners night and 
day. 

" John Hosie was in the mine when the fall came* 
He was one of the foremen, and he and my father 
were friends. Two days had passed in unavailing 
search for him, and it was thought that he must 
have been crushed under the rock with the rest* 
But on the morning of the third day my father 
met him face to face in one of the desolate fallen 
portions of the mine. He was in darkness, he 
was almost exhausted, his clothing was in rags, 
and his fingers were torn and bleeding. When he 
saw my father he could give utterance to only two 
words : ' Oh, Bryden ! 9 he said, and then his heart 
failed him and he cried like a child. He had 
been caught in the fall and had lost his light, and 
though he was familiar with the passages of the 
mine he could not find his way along them on 
account of the debris with which they were filled, 
and the utter confusion into which everything had 
been thrown. He had wandered about for two 
days and nights in the fallen mine, clambering 
over jagged hills of rock, digging his way, with 
torn fingers, through masses of wreckage, in con- 
stant peril from falling roof and yawning pit, 
hungry, thirsty, and alone in the terrible darkness. 
What wonder that his heart gave way in the 
moment of rescue! 



146 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

" The bodies of some of those who were shut in 
by the fall, or buried under it, were found when 
the drift was again opened, but for others the mine 
has been an undisturbed grave for more than forty 
years." 




CHAPTER XI. 

AIR AND WATER IN THE MINES. 

Man is an air-breathing animal. So soon as 
his supply of air is cut off he dies. In proportion 
as that supply is lessened or vitiated, his physical 
and mental energies fail. One of the first requi- 
sites, therefore, in all mining operations is that the 
ventilation shall be good. To accomplish this end 
an air current must be established. It is true that 
into any accessible cavity atmospheric air will rush, 
but if it be allowed to remain in that cavity with- 
out any replacement it becomes dead and unfit to 
breathe. If, in addition to this, it takes up dele- 
terious gases, like those which escape from the coal 
measures, it becomes poisoned and dangerous to 
human life. Hence the necessity of a continuous 
current. Provisions for such a current are made 
with the opening into every mine. The separate air 
compartment of a shaft has already been noticed. 
In drifts, tunnels, and slopes a part of the opening 
is partitioned off for an airway, or, what is more 
common, a separate passage is driven parallel with, 
and alongside of, the main one. In drifts and 
tunnels, since the mines there are not deep, air 
shafts are often driven at some other point above 



148 



COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 






the workings, or slopes are sunk from the outcrop 
to accommodate the return air from the mine. It is 
clue to the necessity of maintaining an air current 
that all passages and chambers are driven in pairs 
or sets in the manner already explained. It has 
also been explained how the fresh air going in at 
the carriage ways of the shaft, or other openings, 
passes along the gangway to its extremity, back 
along the airway, up to and across the faces of 
each set of chambers, and then down into the air- 
way again, to be carried to the foot of the shaft 
and up by the air passage to the surface. But in 
the larger mines there are many passages besides 
the main gangway that must be supplied with air, 
and the current must therefore be divided or split 
to accommodate them ; so these separate currents, 
taken in this way from the main current, and 
themselves often divided and subdivided, are called 
"splits." The air channels thus branching, unit- 
ing, crossing, and recrossing form a most compli- 
cated system of ventilation. But the current goes 
nowhere by chance. Every course is marked out 
for it. On the fact that it follows that given path 
depends the lives of the workmen and the success- 
ful operation of the mine. Sometimes it becomes 
necessary to carry two currents of air through the 
same passage in opposite directions. In that case 
the passage will either be partitioned along its 
length, or a wooden box laid through it to conduct 
one of the air currents. If one air course crosses 



AIR AND WATER IN THE MINES. 119 

another, as is often the case, a channel will be cut 
in the roof of one of the passages, and the lower 
side of the channel will be closed tightly by ma- 
sonry, to prevent any possible intermingling of the 
currents, a circumstance which might prove disas- 
trous. Entrances and cross-headings cut through 
between parallel passages for purposes of ventila- 
tion are closed as soon as the next cross-heading is 
made, for reasons -already explained. This closing 
is usually done by building up in the aperture a 
wall of slate, rock, and coal, and filling the chinks 
with dirt from the floor of the mine. Sometimes 
wooden partitions are put in instead, and between 
principal air passages the cross-headings are closed 
by heavy walls of masonry. When it is necessary 
to turn the air from any traveling way, or to pre- 
vent it from further following such traveling way, 
a partition is built across the passage, and in the 
opening left in the partition a cloor is swung. If 
this is across a way through which mine cars pass, 
a boy will be stationed at the door to open it when 
the cars come and close it as soon as they have 
gone through. He is called a " door boy." All 
doors are so hung as to swing open against the 
current of air, and are therefore self-closing. The 
law directs that this shall be done. There are 
several patented devices for giving an automatic 
movement to mine doors ; but few if any of them 
are in practical operation in the anthracite mines. 
The conditions here are not favorable for the use of 



150 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

self-acting doors, and besides this the act of 1885 
provides that all main doors shall have an attend- 
ant. The law is very explicit on this subject of 
ventilation ; it is a matter of the utmost impor- 
tance in operating a mine. A failure of the air 
current for even an hour might, in some mines, 
result in the death of all those who chanced to be 
inside. For this current not only supplies air for 
breathing purposes, but it takes up the smoke, the 
dust, the dangerous and the poisonous gases, and 
carries them to the surface. In the same way pure 
air is drawn into the lungs, loaded with the refuse 
matter brought there by the blood, and then ex- 
pelled. So life is preserved in both cases. 

In order to create this circulation of air and 
make it continuous, artificial means are ordinarily 
used. The earliest method of creating an artificial 
air current which should be constant, and one still 
in use to a limited extent, is that by the open fur- 
nace. This is an ordinary fireplace with grate bars, 
built near the foot of an opening into the mine, 
and having a bricked-in smoke-flue which leads 
into the air passage of that opening at some little 
distance above the floor of the mine. The volume 
of heat thus passing into the airway w T ill rarefy the 
air therein, and so create and maintain a strong, in- 
variable, upward current. Sometimes the furnace 
is placed at the foot of an air shaft a long distance 
from the main opening, thus making it an upcast 
shaft. The reverse, however, is usually the case. 






AIR AND WATER IN THE MINES. 151 

All air that enters the mine by any opening is 
usually drawn out at the main shaft or other main 
entrance. But as the air returning from the work- 
ing places of the mine is often laden with inflam- 
mable gases, it is not allowed to come into contact 
with the fire of the furnace, but is carried into the 
shaft by a channel cut into the rock above the roof 
of the mine. Furnace ventilation in mines in 
which explosive gases are generated is dangerous 
at the best, and is now prohibited by the act of 
1885. 

The modern and most common method of creat- 
ing and maintaining a circulation of air in a mine 
is by a fan built at the mouth of the air compart- 
ment of the shaft or slope. The fan exhausts the 
air from the mine by the airway, and fresh air 
rushes in by the carriage way, or any other open- 
ing to the surface to restore the equilibrium. 
Sometimes the fan is used as a blower and forces 
air into the mine instead of exhausting it. The 
advantage of this method is that it gives better 
air to the workmen at the faces of chambers and 
headings, but the objection to it is that it brings 
all the smoke and gases out by the main gangway. 
This is a serious objection, not only making this 
principal passage unfit to see or breathe in, but 
making it dangerous also by the presence of in- 
flammable gases. The fan is therefore commonly 
used as an exhauster. 

There are various kinds of fans in use at the 




152 



COAL AND THE COAL MINES, 



mines, but the kind generally employed is pat- 
terned after Guibal's invention. It is simply a 
great wheel without a rim, and instead of spokes 
it has blades like those of a windmill. It is run 
by a steam-engine, makes forty revolutions per 
minute at an average rate of speed, and sends from 
one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand 
cubic feet of fresh air per minute into the mine. 

The act of 1885 requires the mine operator to 
furnish two hundred cubic feet of air per minute 
to every man in the mine. This is the maximum 
amount necessary for perfect respiration. In the 
larger workings perhaps six hundred men and boys 
are employed. For this number one hundred and 
twenty thousand cubic feet of air per minute would 
be required by law. A large fan would supply this 
amount by running at almost its minimum rate of 
speed. So long, therefore, as the fan and air pas- 
sages are in good working condition there need be 
no fear of lack of proper ventilation. But to give 
absolutely pure air to the workers in the mine is an 
utter impossibility under any system that has yet 
been devised. The outer atmosphere that is drawn 
into the mines has hardly got beyond the light of 
the sun before it has taken up a certain percent- 
age of impurities. As it passes by the working 
faces of the chambers it carries along with it the 
gases evolved from the coal ; principally the car- 
bonic acid gas or black damp, and the light car- 
bureted hydrogen or fire damp. It also takes up 



AIR AND WATER IN THE MINES. 153 

and carries along the powder smoke, the organic 
matter contained in the exhalations of men and 
animals, the products of decaying timber, and the 
dust which is always in the air. Nor is this the 
only deterioration which this air current under- 
goes. The proportion of oxygen in it is dimin- 
ished by the burning of many lamps, by the respi- 
ration of many men, and by the constant decay of 
wood. It is seen, therefore, that the air in which 
the miner must breathe is far from being the pure 
oxygen and hydrogen of the outside atmosphere. 
It follows also that the longer the route is of any 
particular current, and the more working faces it 
passes in its course, the more heavily laden will it 
be with impurities, and the more poisonous for 
those men who last breathe it on its return to the 
upcast air shaft. 

This evil, however, is limited in extent by the 
act of 1885, which provides that no more than 
seventy-five persons shall be employed at the same 
time in any one split or current of air. 

The wonder is that the health of these mine 
workers does not sooner fail them, especially when 
we take into consideration the wet condition of 
many of the mines. It is a fact, however, that 
miners as a class are not more subject to disease 
than other workmen. The decimation in their 
ranks is due mostly to accidents producing bodily 
injuries and death, not to diseases which attack 
them as a result of their occupation. 



154 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

Next in importance to the matter of ventilation 
in mines is the matter of drainage. The first dif- 
ficulty experienced from water is while the shaft 
or slope is in process of sinking. It is usually 
necessary to hold the water in one side of the 
opening while work is going on in the other side. 
A small pumping engine is generally sufficient to 
keep the pit clear until the bottom is reached, but 
occasionally the amount of water is such that a 
large engine and pumping appliances have to be 
put in place at once. In Europe much trouble is 
often experienced from the excessive flow of water 
while sinking the shaft, and a watertight casing has 
frequently to follow the shaft downward in order 
that work may go on at all. Such appliances are 
not as a rule necessary in this country, though 
much difficulty has been encountered in sinking 
shafts through the quicksand deposits of the Sus- 
quehanna basin in the Wyoming valley. 

The general principle of mine drainage has been 
already explained. It is, in brief, that the floor 
of the mine shall be so graded that all water will 
gravitate to a certain point. That point is near 
the foot of the shaft or slope, and is at the mouth 
of the drift or tunnel. But from the sump of the 
shaft or slope the water must be raised by artificial 
means. A powerful steam pumping engine, located 
at the surface, is employed to do this work, and 
one compartment of the shaft or slope, known as- 
the pump-way, is set aside for the accommodation 



AIR AND WATER IN THE MINES. 155 

of pipe, pump-rods, and supporting timbers, which 
extend from the top to the bottom of the shaft. 
The most powerful of these pumps will throw out 
a volume of twelve hundred gallons of water per 
minute. It is seldom that the tonnage of water 
pumped from a mine falls below the tonnage of 
coal hoisted, and in some of the wet collieries of 
the Lehigh district eight or ten tons of water are 
pumped out for every ton of coal hoisted. In the 
Wyoming district a thousand tons of water a day 
is not an unusual amount to be thrown out of a 
mine by a single pump. 

In driving gangways or chambers toward aban- 
doned workings that have been allowed to fill with 
water much care is necessary, especially if the new 
mine is on a lower level, which is usually the case. 
The act of 1885 provides that "whenever a place 
is likely to contain a dangerous accumulation of 
water, the working approaching such place shall 
not exceed twelve feet in width, and there shall 
constantly be kept, at a distance of not less than 
twenty feet in advance, at least one bore hole near 
the centre of the working, and sufficient flank bore 
holes on each side." It often happened, before 
accurate surveys of mines were required to be 
made and filed, that operators would drive cham- 
bers or gangways toward these reservoirs of water 
in ignorance of their whereabouts. The firing of 
a blast, the blow of a pick, perhaps, would so 
weaken the barrier pillar that it would give way 



156 



COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 



and the water breaking through would sweep into 
the lower workings with irresistible force, carrying 
death to the workmen in its path and destruction 
to the mine. Some very distressing accidents have 
occurred in this way. It is customary now for 
operators, when approaching with their workings 
a boundary line of property, to leave a barrier 
pillar at least one hundred feet thick between that 
line and the outer rib or face of their workings ; 
and this whether the area on the other side of the 
line is or is not worked out. Under the present 
system of accurate surveying and mapping, acci- 
dents resulting from flooding by mine water should 
be rare, since the location of boundary lines may 
be calculated almost to the inch, as well as the 
location of all workings in their relation to each 
other. 

But accidents due to a flooding by surface 
water are not always to be obviated. Sometimes 
when a stream crosses the line of outcrop the 
water will break through into the mine and flood 
the lower levels in an incredibly short space of 
time ; and this too when good judgment and pru- 
dence have been used in leaving sufficient coal for 
protection. The continuity and character of the 
strata lying between the earth's surface and the 
coal face cannot always be determined. It is not 
often that accidents from flooding occur while min- 
ing is going on under large bodies of water. The 
precautionary measures taken in presence of a 



AIR AND WATER IN THE MINES. 157 

known danger are sufficient to reduce that danger 
to a minimum. 

Disasters occur occasionally as the result of a 
peculiarly deceptive condition of the overlying 
strata, whereby a rush of earth, quicksand, or 
mud into a mine causes loss of life and destruction 
of property. The bed of a stream cut deep into 
the rocks in some former geological period, and 
then filled to the level of the surrounding country 
with drift in some later age, leaves a dangerous 
and unsuspected depression in the strata which the 
miner's drill may pierce or his blast break into at 
any time with disastrous results. One of the most 
characteristic of this class of accidents occurred at 
Nanticoke in the Wyoming region on the 18th of 
December, 1885, in a mine operated by the Sus- 
quehanna Coal Company. A miner by the name 
of Kiveler broke into a depression of this kind 
while blasting, and immediately through the aper- 
ture a great volume of water, quicksand, and culm 
came rushing down. It filled up that entire por- 
tion of the mine, burying twenty-six men and boys 
beyond possible hope of rescue and endangering 
the lives of hundreds of others. Energetic efforts 
were made to tunnel through the masses of sand 
and culm packed in the passages of the mine in 
order to reach those whose avenues of escape had 
been cut off, many believing that they had been 
able to reach high enough ground to escape the 
flood. These efforts, lasting through many weeks, 



158 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

were wholly unsuccessful. The men were never 
reached. Bore holes, drilled into the chambers 
where they were imprisoned, both from the inside 
and from the surface, proved conclusively that the 
passages were crowded full of sand and culm, and 
that the men must have perished immediately 
upon the occurrence of the disaster. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE DANGEKOUS GASES. 

One of the chief dangers to which workmen in 
the mines are subject arises from the gases given 
off by minerals and metals. Though these dele- 
terious gases are commonly found in more or less 
abundance in the coal mines, and are usually con- 
sidered in connection with such mines, they are, 
nevertheless, not confined to the coal measures. 
They have been noticed also in mines of lead, 
sulphur, salt, and other substances. It is said 
that anthracite contains a much larger proportion 
of these gases than do bituminous or other coals, 
but that being hard it holds them more tenaciously, 
and is therefore worked with less risk. The soft 
coals, on the contrary, being porous as well as soft, 
allow the gases to escape from them much more 
readily, and so increase the danger at the working 
faces of the mines. The gas given out most 
abundantly by the coal is light carbureted hydro- 
gen^ known as marsh gas, from the fact that being 
a product of vegetable decomposition under water, 
bubbles of it rise to the surface on stirring the 
waters of a marsh. This is the gas that is known 
to miners as fire damp. The French call it 




160 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

grisou. Marsh gas, in its simple form, consists 
of four parts of hydrogen to one of carbon. It is 
about one half the weight of air, and therefore 
rises and gathers at the roof of a mine chamber, 
extending downward as it accumulates. When it 
is mixed with from four to twelve times its vol- 
ume of atmospheric air it becomes violently explo- 
sive. If the mixture is above or below this pro- 
portion it is simply inflammable, burning without 
explosive force, with a pale blue flame. The value 
of a perfect ventilating current across the faces of 
chambers which are making gas rapidly can now 
be appreciated. It is not only necessary that the 
supply of air should be sufficient to make the gas 
non-explosive, but that it should be sufficient to 
dilute it beyond even the point of inflammability. 
For to its inflammable more than to its explosive 
quality is due most of the disasters with which 
it is accredited. A peculiar and dangerous feature 
of this gas is that it does not always escape from 
the coal at a uniform rate, but often comes out 
suddenly in large compact bodies. These are 
called " blowers." They are found most commonly 
in faults, in cracks in the coal seams, or in open 
spots in the body of coal, where they have op- 
portunity to accumulate. They contain, besides 
marsh gas, less than one per cent, of carbonic 
acid, and from one to four per cent/ of nitrogen. 
It is impossible to anticipate their coming ; the 
miner's drill may strike into one and free it at 



THE DANGEROUS GASES. 161 

any time without a moment's warning. It may even 
burst through the face by its own power. In such 
cases danger is imminent, disaster is most common. 

When the naked light of the miner comes into 
contact with any considerable quantity of fire 
damp in an explosive state the shock that follows 
is terrific. Men and mules, cars and coal, are 
hurled together to destruction. Walls are swept 
out, iron rails are bent double, doors are torn from 
their fastenings, the mine is laid waste. The dam- 
age which results from an explosion of gas is of 
course much greater than that which is due to mere 
ignition and burning without the explosive force. 
In the latter case, however, the danger to the miner 
is but slightly diminished. He is liable to receive 
injuries which may prove immediately fatal. His 
burning lamp no sooner touches the body of fire 
damp than it bursts into flame, which, propelled 
by expansive force, passes swiftly down along the 
roof of the chamber. Taking up enough oxygen 
from the atmospheric air to make combustion more 
fierce, it returns to the face of the chamber with 
a violent contractile surge, scorching everything 
in its path, and then, perhaps after another brief 
sally, it burns itself out. 

The miner who accidentally fires a block of fire 
damp falls suddenly flat on his face on the floor of 
the mine, burying his mouth, nose, and eyes in the 
dirt to protect them from the flame and intense 
heat. Then he clasps his hands over the back of 



162 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

his head and neck to protect these parts from 
injury, and lies waiting for the minute or two to 
pass before the fire shall have burned itself out. 
But he must not wait too long. The fatal after 
damp follows quick upon the heels of the flame, 
and his only safety from certain death lies now in 
immediate flight. 

The danger from inflammable gases was known 
and appreciated very early in the history of min- 
ing. But it was long thought to be an unavoid- 
able danger. Light must be had or no work could 
be done, and the only light that could be obtained 
was from the flame produced by combustion. 
Candles were commonly used. They were stuck 
into a ball of clay and fastened to the sides of the 
working places at the most advantageous points. 
The bituminous mines of England were pecul- 
iarly prolific of inflammable gases ; accidents were 
almost of daily occurrence. On the 25th of May, 
1812, a great disaster occurred at Felling Colliery, 
near Newcastle, in which eighty-nine persons lost 
their lives by explosion of fire damp, and public 
attention and the public conscience were directed 
to the matter of safety in mines more intensely 
than ever. Sir Humphrey Davy was then in the 
zenith of his fame. In April, 1815, he returned 
to London after a triumphal tour through France 
and Italy, in which his progress had been marked 
by a series of brilliant experiments. He had no 
sooner reached home than he was asked bv Mr. 



THE DANGEROUS GASES. 163 

Buddie, a well-known colliery owner of that day, 
to turn his attention toward improved methods of 
lighting the mines. Specimens of the dangerous 
gas were sent to him from Newcastle, and he ex- 
perimented with them. He found that the flame 
from them would not pass through a small tube, 
nor through a set of small tubes standing side by 
side. He found also that the length of the tube 
was immaterial. He therefore shortened them 
until they were mere sections, until his set of par- 
allel tubes became simply wire gauze. The proper 
proportion between the substance of the wire and 
the size of the aperture was found to be twenty- 
eight wires to the linear inch, and seven hundred 
and eighty-four apertures to the square inch, a 
proportion that is still in use. This wire gauze 
was then made into the form of a cylindrical tube 
about six inches long and one and one half inches 
in diameter, with a flat gauze top. To the bottom 
of this tube was fastened a small cylindrical oil 
vessel, and to the top a ring handle. The wick 
extended up from the oil vessel inside the tube. 

When Sir Humphrey had perfected his lamp to 
a point of safety he took it and went with Mr. 
Buddie down to Newcastle, and together they 
traversed with impunity some of the most danger- 
ous parts of the Bentham seam, at that time one 
of the most fiery coal beds known. At about the 
same time the celebrated George Stephenson also 
invented a safety lamp similar in most respects to 



164 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

the Davy, so also, later, did Clanny and Museler, 
and all four kinds are in general use. Other styles 
have been invented also, but for the purposes to 
which a safety lamp is properly applied the Davy 
doubtless still excels all others. Those purposes 
are principally the investigation of workings to dis- 
cover the presence of gas, and to aid in the erec- 
tion of proper appliances for driving it out. It 
is not necessary, in these days of powerful venti- 
lating machinery, to allow dangerous gases to re- 
main in working places and to mine the coal there 
by the light of safety lamps. It is far safer, and 
better in every way, to sweep the chambers clean 
from foul air by strong ventilating currents, so 
that the miner may work by the light of his naked 
and most convenient common tin lamp. The 
objection, therefore, to the Davy lamp, that the 
light given out by it is too dim, need not be con- 
sidered a serious one. The size of the flame can- 
not be increased without destroying the proportion 
between it and the gauze cylinder, and the size of 
the cylinder cannot be increased without making 
a dangerously large chamber for the accommoda- 
tion of explosive gas. Therefore the light given 
out must, of necessity, be. dim. 

But the safety lamp itself must be used with 
care and prudence, otherwise it may become no 
less an instrument of danger than the naked lamp. 
When it is carried into a chamber that contains 
fire damp the gas enters freely through the gauze 



THE DANGEROUS GASES. 165 

into the cylindrical chamber, and is there ignited 
and consumed without communicating its flame to 
the outside body. The presence of gas is indi- 
cated by the conduct of the flame of the lamp. 
If the percentage of marsh gas is small the flame 
simply elongates and becomes smoky. If it is 
mixed with from eight to twelve or fourteen times 
its volume of atmospheric air the flame of the wick 
disappears entirely, and the interior of the cylin- 
der becomes filled with the blue flame of burning 
gas. It will not do to hold the lamp long in this 
mixture, the wires will become red with heat, and 
the outer gas may then become ignited from them. 
Neither will it do to hold the lamp in a current of 
gaseous air moving at a greater rate of speed than 
six or eight feet per second, since in that case the 
flame is apt to be driven through the gauze and to 
set fire to the gas outside. There is also danger 
if the lamp be thrust suddenly into an explosive 
mixture that the force of the explosion inside the 
wire-gauze cylinder will force the flame through 
the mesh. It will be seen, therefore, that even the 
safety lamp is not an absolute protection against 
danger from explosive and inflammable gases. 

The position and duties of the fire boss at each 
colliery have already been referred to. He goes 
into the mine about four o'clock in the morning 
and makes his round before the men arrive. If 
gas has been found in an inflammable or explosive 
condition the workmen are not allowed to enter 




166 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

the place until it has been cleared out by the erec- 
tion of brattices and other ventilating appliances. 
If only an insignificant quantity has been found 
in any chamber, the miner who works the place is 
warned of its existence and told to brush it out. 
In obedience to this order he goes to the working 
face, sets his lamp on the floor, and removing his 
coat swings that garment vigorously over his head, 
thus mixing and diluting the gas and driving it 
down into the current. 

It is not in the working chambers, however, that 
the most dangerous accumulations of fire damp are 
found, but in the worked out and abandoned por- 
tions of the mine. Here it may collect unnoticed 
until large bodies of it are formed, and then when 
some one blunders into it with a naked lamp a 
terrific explosion is the inevitable result. The 
act of 1885 recognizes this especial danger, and 
makes it obligatory on operators to keep old work- 
ings free of dangerous bodies of gas ; and- to this 
end it directs that they shall be inspected at least 
once a week by the fire boss or his assistant. 
Where it is known that such gas exists, or is liable 
to accumulate in old workings, the entrances to 
such places are barred across, and the word 
"Fire!" is written conspicuously at the opening 
to them. But notwithstanding all rules and pre- 
cautions, ignitions and explosions of fire damp are 
still dangerously common. Among the thousands 
of mine workers there is always some one who is 



THE DANGEROUS GASES. 167 

careless, some one who blunders ; the lessons of 
perfect watchfulness and obedience are hard les- 
sons to be learned. 

As has already been Intimated, the danger 
which results from the burning of fire damp lies 
not alone in the fierce flame given forth, but also, 
and perhaps in a still greater degree, in the prod- 
uct of its combustion. This product is known to 
the miner as u after damp," and consists princi- 
pally of carbonic acid gas with some nitrogen,, It 
is irrespirable, and a single inhalation of it, in 
its pure state, will produce immediate insensibility 
and speedy death. It is heavier than atmospheric 
air and therefore falls to the bottom of the mine 
as soon as it is formed from the combustion of the 
light carbureted hydrogen. It is for this reason 
that the miner, who has fallen on his face on the 
floor of the mine to escape the flame of the burn- 
ing fire damp, rises as soon as that flame has dis- 
appeared and hastens, if he is able, to a place of 
safety. Indeed, it is easier to protect one's self 
from the surging fire above than from the invis- 
ible and insidious gas below, so quickly does it 
form, so deadly is it in effect. 

One of the most characteristic disasters of re- 
cent times, resulting from the explosion of fire 
damp and the accumulation of after damp, oc- 
curred on Monday, August 14, 1871, at the Eagle 
Shaft, situated about a mile below the town of 
Pittston, in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. At 



168' COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

nine o'clock on the morning of that day a driver 
boy by the name of Martin Mangan was passing 
along an upper gangway, driving a mule with a 
trip of mine cars. Just above him lay a section 
of the mine that had been worked out and aban- 
doned, in the old chambers of which a large body 
of fire damp had been allowed to accumulate. At 
the hour mentioned there came a sudden and exten- 
sive fall of roof in these old workings. The impulse 
given to the air by this fall drove it out into the 
working galleries, and with it the inflammable gas. 
When the fire damp reached the heading and 
touched the flame of Martin Mangan's lighted 
lamp there was a terrific explosion. At the 
mouth of the shaft timbers were cracked, clouds 
of dust poured out, and debris from the mine was 
thrown violently into the outer air. People who 
were a mile away heard the noise of the explosion 
and hastened to the scene. Mining experts knew 
at once what had occurred. As soon as sufficient 
repairs could be made to the shaft a rescuing party, 
led by Superintendent Andrew Bryden of the 
Pennsylvania Coal Company's mines, descended 
into the mine and began to search for victims. 
Those workmen who were on the other side of the 
shaft from where the explosion took place were 
rescued and brought out alive. But little progress 
could be made, however, toward the region of the 
trouble on account of the after damp which had 
accumulated. Up to two o'clock on Tuesday 









THE DANGEROUS GASES. 169 

morning five dead bodies had been discovered, and 
during that day twelve more were taken out ; all 
who had worked in that section of the mine. The 
positions of these bodies showed that the men 
had fallen where they chanced to be when the 
explosion occurred. The first wave of afterdamp 
that touched them had made them insensible, 
and death speedily followed. They died from 
asphyxia. 

" Black damp " is pure carbonic acid gas, con- 
taining two parts of oxygen to one of carbon. It 
is the principal constitutent of after damp, which 
may, indeed, contain no other elements in appre- 
ciable quantities. The two mixtures are there- 
fore often spoken of as being the same, and the 
miners apply the term " choke damp " indiscrimi- 
nately to either. 

Black damp is also given off by the coal in the 
same manner that fire damp is, and frequently the 
two mixtures are evolved together. Carbonic acid 
gas is also one of the products of burning coal, of 
burning oil, and of the respiration of man and 
beast. It is about one and a half times as heavy 
as air, and is therefore always found next to the 
floor of the mine. This gas is not inflammable. 
Its presence may be detected by the conduct of 
the flame of the lamp. In an atmosphere con- 
taining but a small percentage of it the lamp light 
will grow dim, and, as the proportion of gas in- 
creases, will become more and more feeble until 



170 



COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 



it is finally extinguished. An atmosphere con- 
taining from eight to ten per cent, of this gas 
may be breathed without immediate danger; it 
will simply occasion dullness of intellect and numb- 
ness of body. This condition changes into one 
of insensibility as the inhalation continues, or as 
the percentage of gas is increased, and to enter 
an undiluted body of it means sudden death. It 
is stated that the workmen in the Creuzot mine, in 
France, descended the shaft one morning, on their 
way to work, not knowing that carbonic acid had 
formed in the mine during the night. Following 
one after another along the main passage, they 
had reached a point not far from the foot of the 
shaft when the leader suddenly entered into a 
body of black damp and fell, stricken with as- 
phyxia, before he could utter a cry. The man fol- 
lowing him fell also. The third, bending over 
to draw his comrade out of danger, was himself 
prostrated, and the fourth, by reason of a similar 
effort, shared the fate of the others. But the 
fifth, being an experienced master miner, turned 
quickly in his tracks and obliged those behind him 
to ascend the shaft. The black damp is thus 
quick and terrible in its effect. The greatest 
danger from it, however, exists, not at the work- 
ing faces, where it is usually swept away in the 
ventilating current, but in abandoned workings, 
where it often accumulates unnoticed. 

" White damp " is a more dangerous gas than 



THE DANGEROUS GASES. 171 

either of the others, but is not so frequently found. 
It is carbonic oxide, and consists of equal portions 
of carbon and oxygen. It is a very little lighter 
than air, and has a tendency to rise. When pres- 
ent in a sufficiently pure state it burns with a blue 
flame, but ordinarily it is incombustible and pro- 
duces no effect upon the flame of the lamp. It is 
tasteless and odorless, and its presence cannot be 
detected before it has done its dangerous work. 
To breathe an atmosphere containing a very small 
percentage of it will speedily produce a fatal re- 
sult. It acts on the system as a narcotic, and its 
effect is produced even more quickly than is that 
of black damp. It is not thought to be given off 
in appreciable quantities by the coal at the open 
faces; but it is formed when the carbonic acid 
passes through any ignited carbonaceous material, 
or when steam passes over burning coal. It is 
therefore produced most frequently by smoulder- 
ing gob fires, by burning wood in the mines, or by 
a shaft on fire, and may exist as one of the results 
of an explosion of fire damp or of blasting powder. 
It is the most to be dreaded of any of the gases 
which the miner has to encounter. He may 
possibly avoid the surging flame of the fire damp, 
he may escape from the falling after damp, and 
make his way unharmed through bodies of black 
damp lying thick about his feet, but if he has still 
to encounter this terrible white damp his good 
fortune will have been of little avail ; death will 
almost surely seize him. 



172 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

In connection with this may be mentioned the 
fact that under certain conditions coal dust may 
become violently explosive. When it is mixed 
with air, with or without the presence of fire damp, 
and is set into sudden and intense vibration by a 
heavy powder blast, a fall of roof, or other means, 
it may explode with greater destructive force than 
even fire damp is capable of. Happily such ex- 
plosions are not frequent, all the conditions neces- 
sary being rarely present at the same time. It is 
obvious, moreover, that an accident of this kind 
could occur only in a very dry mine. It is true 
also that the dust of bituminous coals is much 
more liable to be explosive than the dust of an- 
thracite. No well authenticated instances of coal 
dust explosions have been reported from the an- 
thracite regions, while in mining soft coals they 
have undoubtedly occurred. Two cases of this 
kind were reported from France, one in 1875 and 
one in 1877. No longer ago than November 9, 
1888, a terrible explosion of coal dust occurred 
in a bituminous coal mine at Pittsburg, Kansas, 
by which more than one hundred lives were lost. 

In some mines the inflammable and poisonous 
gases are given off in such abundance by the coal 
that it is dangerous to remain in them for even an 
hour after ventilation has been stopped. At such 
collieries when, on account of accident, or for any 
reason, the fan stops running, the men are called 
out immediately, and are not allowed to enter again 



THE DANGEROUS GASES. ~ 173 

until a new circulating current has been estab- 
lished. One of the most notable mine disasters of 
recent years was caused by the quick accumulation 
of black damp and white damp in a mine, the ven- 
tilating system of which had been destroyed and 
the shaft burned out by fire. This was at Avon- 
dale, near Plymouth, in Luzerne County, Penn- 
sylvania, on the 6th of September, 1869. There 
were three conditions here, the presence and coop- 
eration of which made this calamity possible. 
First, the mine was ventilated by a furnace at the 
foot of the shaft ; second, the breaker was built 
over the mouth of the shaft ; and, third, the shaft 
was the only outlet from the mine. The partition 
of the ventilating flue took fire from the furnace 
draught. At ten o'clock in the forenoon a young 
man by the name of Palmer Steele stepped on 
the carriage with a load of hay to take to the in- 
side stables. Half way down the shaft the hay 
took fire from the burning buntons. The engi- 
neer saw the flames rise from the mouth and let 
the carriage, with the young man on it, as quickly 
as possible to the bottom. There were then in 
the mine one hundred and eight men. Not one of 
them came out from it alive. In an incredibly 
short space of time the flames leaped to the top of 
the breaker, one hundred feet from the ground, and 
by the middle of the afternoon the great building 
was a mass of ruins, covering over and blocking up 
the only entrance to the mine. It was far into the 



174 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

night before the debris had been sufficiently cleared 
away to permit of descent into the shaft. Then 
two men, Thomas W. Williams and David Jones, 
went down to search for the imprisoned miners. 
They were scarcely beyond the foot of the shaft 
when they stumbled into a body of white damp 
and were stricken with death. The fire occurred 
on Monday. It was not until ten o'clock Tuesday 
morning that a sufficient ventilating current had 
been established to make it safe for men to de- 
scend. The greatest distance that it was possible 
to go from the foot of the shaft on Tuesday was 
seventy-five feet. Beyond that point the danger 
from suffocation was still imminent. Only three 
bodies had been thus far found. 

Wednesday morning a rescuing party went up 
the plane at some distance from the foot of the 
shaft, and at the head of the plane they found a 
barrier across the gangway. It had been formed 
by placing a mine car in position and packing the 
space between it and the walls with clothing and 
refuse. This barrier was broken down, but there 
was no one behind it. Later another party w r as 
able to go a little farther, and came to a second 
barrier. Outside of this lay the dead body of 
John Bowen. He had come out for some purpose 
from behind the barricade, leaving open an aper- 
ture through which to crawl back, but before he 
could do so he had died from asphyxia. This 
barrier was broken down, and behind it lay the 



THE DANGEROUS GASES. 175 

victims, one hundred and five of them, all dead, 
suffocated by the foul gases of the mine. The 
story of their experiences, their struggles, their 
sufferings, can never be known. 

The disaster which occurred at the West Pitts- 
ton mine on May 27, 1871, was similar in many 
respects to that at Avondale. In this case also 
the breaker, built over the shaft, the only opening 
to the mine, took fire and burned to the ground, 
closing the avenue of escape to thirty-six men and 
boys. These prisoners shut themselves into a 
chamber, building a barricade across the foot of 
it to keep out the foul gases ; but when the rescu- 
ing party broke in to them on the following day 
fourteen of them were found dead and the rest 
w T ere unconscious. Of those who were brought 
out alive four died soon after reaching the sur- 
face. 




CHAPTER XIII. 

THE ANTHRACITE COAL BREAKER. 

In the act of 1885 it is provided that " no in- 
flammable structure other than a frame to sus- 
tain pulleys or sheaves shall be erected over the 
entrance of any opening connecting the surface 
with the underground workings of any mine, 
and no breaker or other inflammable structure 
for the preparation or storage of coal shall be 
erected nearer than two hundred feet to any such 
opening." This was for the purpose of prevent- 
ing, if possible, such lamentable disasters as those 
of Avondale and West Pittston. The results of 
this legislation in providing greater security to 
the employees in mines is invaluable. Formerly 
it had been the custom to build not only the 
shaft-house over the opening into the mine, but the 
breaker itself, wherever there was one, was usually 
erected over the mouth of the shaft. This was 
convenient and economical, since the coal could be 
hoisted directly from the mine to the top of the 
breaker, without the delay of a horizontal transfer 
at the surface of the earth. Many of the shaft 
houses and breakers that had thus been built at 
the time of the passage of the act are still in 




o 
o 



LU 

n: 



THE ANTHRACITE COAL BREAKER. 177 

operation, and will so remain until the time of 
their utility is passed. But all new buildings are 
erected in accordance with the law. 

At the mouth of the shaft heavy upright tim- 
bers are set up, inclosing the opening. These are 
united by cross-beams, and the whole structure is 
well braced. In this head-frame are set the 
sheaves, at a distance from the ground of from 
thirty to fifty feet, although, when the entire sur- 
face plant was under one cover, they were set 
much lower. These sheaves are huge upright 
wheels sixteen feet in diameter, over which the 
ropes pass that connect with the cages. A sheave 
similar in form to the bicycle wheel is now coming 
rapidly into use ; it is found to bear a greater 
strain in comparison with its weight than does any 
other form. 

The hoisting engine must be in the immediate 
vicinity of the shaft, and the rooms for this and 
the boiler, furnace, and pump are usually all 
under one roof. The iron or steel wire ropes ex- 
tend from the sheaves in the head frame to the 
drum in the engine-room, around which they are 
coiled in such a manner that as one is being 
wound up the other is being unwound. There- 
fore as one carriage ascends the other descends by 
virtue of the same movement of the engine. 

Since the breaker may receive coal from two or 
more openings it must be so located as to be con- 
venient to both or all of them. If the ground 



178 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

slopes sufficiently the breaker may be so built 
that its head will be on a level with the head 
of the shaft. This will save breaker hoisting 
When coal is brought out by a slope the track and 
grade of the slope are usually continued, by an 
open trestlework, from the mouth of the opening to 
the head of the breaker. Wherever it is possible 
to do so, the loaded cars are run by gravity from 
the mouth of the opening to the breaker, and the 
empty ones are drawn back by mules. Sometimes 
they are hauled both ways by mules, and some- 
times a small steam locomotive engine is employed 
to draw them back and forth. 

The coal breaker is an institution that is pe- 
culiar to the anthracite coal fields of Pennsylvania. 
Its need was made manifest early in the history of 
anthracite mining, its development was rapid, and 
it has now come to be wholly indispensable in the 
preparation of anthracite coal for the market. It 
is very seldom indeed that one sees this coal in the 
shape and size in which it was mined. All anthra- 
cite coal for domestic use is now broken, screened, 
and separated into grades of uniform size before 
being placed upon the market, and this work is 
done in the coal breakers. 

Previous to the year 1844 these breakers were 
unknown. Several experiments had been made 
in the matter of breaking coal by machinery, but 
there had been no practical results, and the break- 
ing still continued to be done by hand. In that 



THE ANTHRACITE COAL BREAKER. 179 

year, however, a breaker after the modern plan 
was erected at the mines of Gideon Bast, in Schuyl- 
kill County, by J. & S. Battin of Philadelphia. 
It was started on the 28th of February, 1844. 
There were two cast-iron rollers in it, each about 
thirty inches long and thirty inches in diameter, 
and on the surface of these rollers were set iron 
teeth or projections about two and one half inches 
long and four inches from centre to centre. 
These rollers were placed horizontally, side by 
side, and were so geared that, as they revolved, 
their upper surf aces turned toward each other, and 
the teeth on one roller were opposite to the spaces 
on the other. These rolls were afterward im- 
proved by being perforated between the teeth, 
thus presenting less of solid surface to the coal, 
and causing less crushing. Another set of rollers 
was afterward added, being placed above the first 
set, and having the teeth larger and wider apart, 
so that large lumps of coal might first be broken 
into pieces small enough to be crushed readily by 
the lower set. After the perfecting of the rolls 
came the perfecting of the screens for the pur- 
pose of separating the broken coal into grades ac- 
cording to size. Before the introduction of coal 
breakers a hand screen was used. This screen 
was set in a frame, was cylindrical in form, and 
was slightly inclined from the horizontal. It was 
turned by a crank at one end, in the manner of a 
grindstone. The screen placed in the breaker was 



180 



COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 



of much the same pattern, except that instead of 
being from five to eight feet long the length was 
increased to twenty feet, and the diameter cor- 
respondingly enlarged. Mr. Henry Jenkins of 
Potts ville then invented a method of weaving thick 
wire into screen plates about three feet wide, hav- 
ing the proper curve. These curved plates being 
joined together formed the necessary hollow cyl- 
inder. These separate plates are called jackets, 
and when one of them wears out it may be taken 
from the cylinder and replaced, with but little 
trouble and delay. The screen is set in heavy 
framework, and is inclined slightly from the hori- 
zontal. The first segment at the upper end of 
the screen is made of wire woven into a mesh so 
fine that only the smallest particles of coal will 
pass through it; the mesh of the next segment 
is larger, and that of the next larger still. The 
screen may contain from two to five segments in 
its length. Now the coal, being poured -in on top 
of the revolving rolls, comes out from under them 
broken into small pieces, and passes immediately 
into the upper or highest end of the hollow cylin- 
drical screen as it would pass into a barrel. But, 
as the screen revolves on its axis, the finer par- 
ticles of coal fall out through the fine mesh of the 
first segment, and are carried away in an inclined 
trough, while the rest of the coal slides on to the 
next segment. Here the next smallest particles 
fall through and are carried away, and the pro- 



THE ANTHRACITE COAL BREAKER. 181 

cess is continued until the lower end of the screen 
is reached, out of which end all the coal that was 
too large to pass through the mesh of the last seg- 
ment is now poured. It will be seen that by this 
means the different sizes of coal have been sepa- 
rated from each other and can be carried by sepa- 
rate shutes to the loading place. This is the 
principle of the rolls and screens which are the 
main features of every coal breaker, though each 
breaker usually contains two or more sets of rolls 
and from eight to twelve screens. The Wood- 
ward breaker recently erected near Kingston, 
Pennsylvania, has six pairs of rollers and twenty 
screens. Some of these screens are double ; that 
is, they have a larger outside screen surrounding 
the smaller one, and the coal that passes through 
the inner screen is caught by the outer one and 
again divided by means of a smaller mesh. 

Before the days of breakers and screens coal 
was sent to market in the lump, as it came from 
the mine, and it was generally broken and pre- 
pared for use by the consumer. But when the 
separation of coal in the breaker became reduced 
to a system, the four smaller sizes than lump coal 
were soon graded. They were known as steam- 
boat, egg, stove, and chestnut. It was thought at 
the time that no finer grade of coal than chestnut 
could be burned to advantage. But it was not 
long before a smaller size, known as pea coal, was 
separated, placed on the market, and readily sold; 



182 



COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 




and now, within recent years, another still smaller 
size called buckwheat has been saved from the ref- 
use and has come into general use. Everything 
smaller than this is culm and goes to the waste 
pile. The names of the different sizes of market- 
able coal and the spaces over and through which 
they pass in the process of separation are given in 
the following table, taken from Saward's " Coal 
Trade Annual," for 1888 : — 



Lump coal bars 

Steamboat " 

Broken mesh 

Egg " 

Large stove " 

Small stove " 

Chestnut " 

Pea " 

Buckwheat " 

Dirt " 




Through. 
Inches. 



3\ to 4| 
2f to 2$ 
If to 21 
1} to if 
1 to it 

!*«> i 
I to I 



to & 



The necessity which controls the form and con- 
struction of the breaker building is that the un- 
broken and unscreened coal must first be taken to 
a point in the building sufficiently high to allow 
of its passage, by gradual descent, with slow move- 
ment, through successive rolls, screens, shutes, 
and troughs until, thoroughly broken and fully 
cleaned and separated, it reaches the railroad cars, 



THE ANTHRACITE COAL BREAKER. 183 

standing under the pockets, and is loaded into 
them for shipment. It is sometimes possible, as 
has already been intimated, to locate a breaker on 
the side of a hill so that the coal may be run into 
the head of it from the mine by a surface track 
without the necessity of hoisting. In this case the 
building will hug the hill, extending for a long 
distance down the slope of it, but without rising 
at any point to a great height from the surface of 
the ground. In these days, however, the breaker 
is more frequently erected in the valley. The 
general results are thought to be better, and the 
special convenience to railroad outlets to market is 
certainly greater. Besides this, the necessities of 
the case in shaft mining seem to demand it. 

A peculiar and characteristic feature of a 
breaker so built is the great vertical height to 
which one portion of the building is run up. This 
is the portion that contains the shaft up which 
the coal is hoisted, and from the top of which it 
starts on its long descending route to the surface 
again- From one hundred to one hundred and 
fifty feet is not an unusual height for this portion 
of the building- From this topmost part of the 
structure the roof slopes down by stages, on one or 
two sides, widening out, running off at an angle to 
cover a wing, spreading by a projection here and 
there until, by the time the last ten feet in height 
are reached, the ground space covered by the 
building has come to be very great- Under the 



184 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

last or lowest portion of the structure are the rail- 
road sidings on which the cars stand to be loaded 
from the many pockets in which the shutes have 
terminated. Two engines are necessary at the 
breaker, one a winding engine to hoist coal from 
the surface to the top of the breaker, and the 
other a breaker engine to move the rolls, screens, 
and other breaker machinery. The winding 
engine is usually put on the opposite side of the 
shaft tower from the rolls and screens, and the 
ropes from it, either exposed or under cover of a 
long sloping roof, reach up to the sheaves in the 
head frame. The breaker engine is usually 
housed in a wing at one side of the main build- 
ing, while the several nests of boilers, under a 
separate cover, are required by the act of 1885 to 
be at least one hundred feet away from the 
breaker. 

No one, having once seen and examined an 
anthracite coal breaker, could ever mistake one 
for a building erected for any other purpose* 
These breakers have a character peculiarly their 
'own. They are the most prominent features in 
the landscape of every anthracite eoal region, 
where they tower up black, majestic, many-winged, 
and many-windowed, in the range of almost every 
outlook. 

When the mine ear full of eoal is hoisted to the 
head of the breaker it is run by two headmen from 
the carriage across the scale platform to the dump 



THE ANTHRACITE COAL BREAKER. 185 

shute bars on to which it is dumped. These are 
long, sloping, parallel iron bars, set two and one 
half inches apart. The dirt and all the coal that 
is small enough falls through these bars into a hop- 
per, from which it is fed into a pair of screens, 
one on each side. These separate the dirt in the 
manner already described, and divide the clean 
coal into sizes smaller than, and including, egg. 
Each size as it falls through the segment of, or out 
at the end of, the screen, is caught in a separate 
shute and carried to a second set of revolving 
screens where it is again cleaned and separated, 
passing from these screens into the picking shutes. 
All the shutes or troughs in which the coal is 
carried have a sufficient inclination to make the 
material move by gravity, and, to decrease the 
amount of friction, the bottom and sides of each 
shute are lined with sheet iron. The large coals 
which passed over the dump shute bars now slide 
down to a second set of bars, set four and one half 
inches apart, called steamboat bars ; all coal fall- 
ing through these being separated by still a third 
set of bars into steamboat and egg, and eventually 
finding its way to the picking shutes or to the 
rolls which break che prepared coal. All coal 
which passed over the steamboat bars is lump coal, 
and, after having the slate and bony coal removed 
from it by hand as it passes, is carried into the 
lump-coal shute and sent down to the loading 
place ; or else it is carried, by another shute, into 





186 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

the heavy rolls and crushed. As it emerges, 
broken, from these rolls, it passes into revolving 
screens, and the same process of screening and 
separating goes on that has been already described 
in the case of coal falling through the first or 
dump-shute bars. But all this broken, screened, 
and separated coal finds its way eventually into 
the picking shutes. These are narrow troughs 
down which the separate grades of coal pass 
slowly in shallow streams. Across the top of 
each trough, at two or more points in its route 
through the picking-room, narrow seats are placed 
on which boys sit facing up the shute. These boys 
are called slate pickers. It is their duty to pick 
out the pieces of slate, stone, or bone, from the 
stream of coal which passes under them, and 
throw this refuse into a trough at the side of the 
shute, from which point it slides rapidly away. 
The coal as it comes from the mine is full of 
waste material, so that the boy who sits first or 
highest on the shute has no trouble in finding 
plenty to do, and, work as hard as he may, much 
of the unfit material must still escape him. The 
boy who sits below him on the shute is able to 
give the passing stream a closer inspection and 
more careful treatment, and, should there be one 
still below, he must have sharp eyes and skillful 
fingers to detect worthless pieces that have been 
left by his comrades. The boys often put their 
feet in the shute and dam the coal back for a 




3 



7L 



o 

n: 






O 

o 



THE ANTHRACITE COAL BREAKER. 187 

moment to give them time to throw out the abun- 
dance of slate that they may see, but no matter 
how careful they are, nor how many hands the 
coal may pass through in the picking process, a 
certain percentage of slate and bone is sure to 
remain. The slate pickers are not all stationed in 
one room, though the picking-room usually holds 
the greater number of them. They are put at the 
shutes in any part of the breaker where their 
services may be useful or necessary. Indeed, 
there are pickers who sit at the refuse shutes to 
pick out the pieces of good coal which have been 
inadvertently thrown in by the other pickers. In 
some breakers the coal passes from the shute 
across a gently sloping platform, by the side of 
which the boy sits to pick out the waste. 

But the time is undoubtedly coming when the 
occupation of the picker boy will be gone. The 
inventive genius of the age has already devised 
machinery which does its work faster, better, and 
with greater certainty than the most conscientious 
breaker boy could hope to do it. The great col- 
lieries are, one by one, adopting the new methods, 
and the army of breaker boys is gradually but 
surely decreasing. 

Nearly all the slate-picking machines are based 
on the fact that the specific gravity of coal is 
lighter than that of slate or stone. One method 
brings the principle of friction into play. A sec- 
tion, a few feet in length, of the floor of the shute 



188 



COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 



down which the coal passes is made of stone. At 
the end of this stone section is a narrow slot cut in 
the floor, crosswise of the shute, and beyond the 
slot the iron bottom is continued as before. Now 
when the shallow stream of broken coal strikes the 
stone bottom the friction between that bottom and 
the pieces of slate and stone is so great that these 
particles are impeded in their progress, and by 
the time they reach the slot they have not impetus 
enough to cross it and must therefore drop into it 
and be carried away. But the friction between 
coal and stone is slight in comparison, and the 
pieces of coal retain enough of their impetus to 
carry them safely across the slot and on down the 
shute. This is not a perfect separation, and the 
coal and slate which it divides has usually to be 
looked over again, to insure satisfactory results. 
The best and most practicable invention thus far 
brought into use is that of Mr. Charles W. Ziegler, 
picker boss at the Von Storch colliery, Scranton. 
This machine acts somewhat upon the method last 
described, though by a system of rollers, levers, and 
screens in connection with it and attached to it, it 
is able to make quite perfect separation of the coal 
and slate. Two or three of these machines placed 
on a single shute should do the work required of 
them very thoroughly. 

The experience of domestic buyers of coal 
would seem to indicate, either that the picker boys 
do not do their whole duty or that the picking 



THE ANTHRACITE COAL BREAKER. 189 

machines have not yet been made perfect. But it 
must be remembered that the separation of slate 
and bony coal from good material is made only in 
a rough and general way in the mine, and that a 
very large percentage of the output, as it reaches 
the breaker, is unfit for use. To clean and sepa- 
rate this material thoroughly, therefore, requires 
much labor, and extreme care and skill. 

After these separate streams of coal have passed 
the scrutiny of the picker boys or the test of the 
picking machine, the shutes in which they run are 
narrowed into pockets or bins, closed at the end 
by a gate. The pocket projects over the car track 
high enough from it for a railroad coal car to 
stand beneath, and the coal is then fed from the 
pocket into the car at will. 

There is also a loading place for the rock and 
slate which have been separated from the coal on 
its way through the breaker ; and there are two 
or three points where the coal dirt is gathered 
from its pockets to be taken away. All this ref- 
use is run out by separate tracks to a convenient 
distance from the breaker and there dumped. 

It is estimated that sixteen per cent, of the ma- 
terial which goes into the breaker to be prepared 
comes out as waste, and is sent to the refuse dump. 
It can readily be supposed, therefore, that in the 
course of a few years these waste heaps will grow 
to an enormous size ; and as a matter of fact they 
do. The dirt or culm, which includes all material 



190 



COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 






finer than buckwheat coal, is usually dumped on a 
separate pile from the rock, slate, and bony coal, 
since it is not wholly without at least prospective 
value. It has been used frequently in the coal 
regions to fill in beneath railroad tracks supported 
by trestle-work, and it is valuable as a foundation 
on which to lay stone flagging for footwalks, since 
it does not yield readily to the action of frost. 
Culm has also been utilized by adding to it a cer- 
tain percentage of mucilaginous or pitchy material 
and compressing it into bricks for fuel. In some 
European countries a large amount of waste is 
burned in this way, but in America the cost of 
preparation is still too great to permit of competi- 
tion with prepared anthracite. The most charac- 
teristic feature of scenery in the anthracite coal 
regions, aside from the breakers themselves, is 
the presence of these great, bare, black hills of 
culm, shining in the sunlight, smoothly white 
under the snows of winter. Sometimes these 
culm banks take fire, either spontaneously or as 
the result of carelessness or accident. If the pile 
is near enough to the breaker to menace it, or 
near enough to an outcrop to carry combustion 
into the coal of the mine, the fire must be extin- 
guished, and this is sometimes done with much 
labor and at great expense. If no danger is ap- 
prehended, the fire is allowed to smoulder until it 
burns out, a process which may take months or 
even years, during which time little blue flames 



THE ANTHRACITE COAL BREAKER. 191 

flicker on the surface of the bank, the sky above 
it is tinged with red at night, and the whole black 
hillside is finally covered with great blotches of 
white ash. To the poor people who live in the 
vicinity of the breakers these heaps of refuse coal 
are an unmixed blessing. Pieces of good coal are 
always being thrown out inadvertently with the 
waste, and the bony coal that is discarded is not by 
any means without value as a fuel; indeed it makes 
a very respectable fire. So, too, one can obtain, 
with a screen, from the culm heap quite a little 
percentage of material that will burn. Thus it 
comes about that every day women and children 
and old men go to these black hills with ham- 
mer and screen and gather fuel for their fires, and 
carry it home in bags, or wheelbarrows, or little 
handcarts. It is the old story over again of the 
gleaners in the field. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

IN THE BITUMINOUS COAL MINES. 

A brief history of the discovery and introduc- 
tion into use of the bituminous coals of Pennsyl- 
vania has already been given ; but only casual ref- 
erence has been made to the methods of mining" in 
the bituminous regions. It is true that of the one 
hundred and twenty thousand square miles of 
workable coal beds in the United States less than 
five hundred square miles are of anthracite coal. 
It is true, also, that more than two thirds of the 
coal produced in the United States during the 
year 1887 was of the bituminous variety, and that 
the income from bituminous coal during that year 
was nearly twice as much as the income from an- 
thracite. Yet it is obvious that in any descrip- 
tion of coal mining methods the anthracite mines 
should be used as the chief examples. This is not 
only because of the greater commercial importance 
of anthracite, and of its greater familiarity as a 
domestic fuel, but it is principally because of the 
far greater skill, judgment, and ingenuity required 
in mining it and preparing it for market. In the 
bituminous regions the coal is soft, lies flat and 
near the surface, and is mined by the simplest 



IN THE BITUMINOUS COAL MINES. 193 

methods. The reader is already familiar with 
some of the complications, obstacles, and problems 
that meet and beset the operator in the anthracite 
regions, and with the great labor, vast expendi- 
tures, and high degree of skill necessary to reach, 
take out, and prepare the anthracite coal. In 
view of these facts no excuse is necessary for at- 
taching the greater importance to the description 
of methods in the anthracite region. But a brief 
outline of the systems in vogue at the bituminous 
mines will not be uninteresting, so far at least as 
they differ from those in use at the anthracite 
mines. 

In the year 1887 a little more than one third of 
the bituminous coal output of the United States 
came from the Pennsylvania mines. Pittsburgh is 
the centre of the soft coal trade of that state, and 
the principal coal seam of the region is known as 
the " Pittsburgh bed." It is included in an area 
about fifty miles square, and varies in thickness 
from two or three feet in the northwestern part, 
and six feet at Pittsburgh, to ten feet up the Mo- 
nongahela River, and twelve feet up the Youghio- 
geny. The exhaustion of so vast a coal bed is a 
practical impossibility, and the questions that en- 
gage the attention of the mining engineer in these 
regions are not so much questions of the economy 
of coal as they are questions of the economy of 
labor. The coal lies near the surface, and the 
outcrops on the flanks of the hills and banks of the 




194 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

rivers are so numerous that mast of the mining 
can be, and is,, done by drift above water leveL 
The outlay of capital required in opening a mine 
is therefore very small, marketable coal being 
obtained at almost the first blow of the pick. 

Before mining operations are begun a complete 
survey is made of all outcroppings, and their dif- 
ferences in level are obtained. From this data a 
comparatively accurate knowledge may be had of 
the position of the coal bed under ground, as the 
dip of the seams is very moderate and uniform, 
and but few faults and other irregularities are en- 
countered. It is then decided where to locate the 
mouth of the drift so that the entry can be driven 
in on the rise of the coal and the mine become 
self-draining. It is important, however, to have 
the opening at a convenient point near the river 
or railroad, and it is usually so made if possible, 
even though the dip should be away from the 
opening. The inclination is always so slight as 
not to interfere greatly with the hauling of cars, 
and it is not much of a task to make a separate 
opening for drainage. The coal seam is divided 
by vertical cleavage planes, running at right 
angles to each other, one of which is known as the 
butt cleavage and the other as the face cleavage. 
The main entries are driven in, if possible, on 
the face cleavage, as are also the chambers, or 
" rooms " as they are called here ; while the entries 
from which the rooms are turned are always driven 



IN THE BITUMINOUS COAL MINES. 195 

on the butt cleavage. The drift, or main entry, 
has an airwa*y running parallel with it ; some- 
times it has one on each side of it. It is driven 
eight or nine feet in width, except where two 
tracks are necessary, in which case it is made from 
twelve to fifteen feet wide. These double or treble 
entries are parallel to each other, and are sep- 
arated by a wall of coal from twenty-five to forty 
feet in width. Through this wall, at about every 
thirty yards, entrances, or, as they are called here, 
" break-throughs," are made, having the same 
width as the entry. The height of roof in the 
entries of the Pittsburgh seam is usually five 
and one half or six feet in the clear. At right 
angles to the main entry butt entries are driven 
in pairs, parallel to each other and about thirty or 
forty feet apart, with break-throughs or cross-cuts 
for the passage of air, as on the main entries. 
From each of these butt entries, at right angles to 
them, and in opposite directions, the rooms are 
driven. They are made about twenty-one feet 
wide, with pillars between them twelve feet thick, 
and are not often more than eighty yards in 
length. They are usually driven to meet the faces 
of the rooms which are being worked from the 
next parallel butt entry, or are extended to that 
butt entry itself. At the point where the room 
turns off from the butt entry it is made only seven 
feet wide for a distance of from fifteen to twenty- 
one feet, then the room is widened out to its full 




196 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

width of twenty-one feet. The track on which 
the mine wagon runs is laid straight up the side 
of the room from the opening at the entry, occu- 
pying a clear space about seven feet wide. The 
rest of the room is well filled with the refuse 
which has been separated from the coal as mining 
has progressed, and the roof is supported by an 
abundance of props, or " posts " as they are here 
called. In one room, with an ordinary roof, about 
six hundred and fifteen posts would be necessary. 
The pillars are long, the distances between break- 
throughs averaging thirty yards. This is known 
as the " double entry " system, to distinguish it 
from the single entry system which was formerly 
in general use. The method by single entry con- 
sisted in driving the butt entries singly, about one 
hundred and. sixty yards apart, and the face entries 
the same distance apart, at right angles to the butt 
entries, thus laying off the mine in large square 
blocks which were then mined out. The difficulty 
with this system was that from twenty-five to fifty 
per cent, of the pillars were necessarily lost, while 
by the double entry system, which now prevails, 
all or nearly all the pillars can be taken out. 

Of course the features in the plan of each mine 
vary according to the special necessities of that 
mine, but in general they do not differ greatly 
from those that have been described. 

The method of cutting coal here is also peculiar 
to the soft coal mines. The miner has a pick with 




PLAN OF A BITUMINOUS COAL MINE. 



' 




IN THE BITUMINOUS COAL MINES. 197 

sharp, pointed ends, and with this he cuts a hori- 
zontal groove or channel, from two and a half to 
three and a half feet deep across the entire width 
of the entry or room. This groove is cut in that 
horizontal section of the face known as the bearing- 
in section. It may be in the bottom layer of coal, 
or it may be one or two feet above the bottom. 
The process itself is known as " bearing in," 
"under cutting," " holing," or " undermining." 
While he is at this work the miner must lie on the 
floor of the room, partly on his side, but with 
hands and arms free. When the horizontal groove 
has been completed a vertical groove similar to it 
in size and shape is made at one side of the face. 
These channels are sometimes cut with mining 
machines having compressed air for a motive 
power. This machine is small but powerful. It is 
placed on a low inclined platform at the face of 
coal, and is operated by a man called a " runner." 
The inclination of the platform causes the machine, 
which is on wheels, to gravitate constantly toward, 
and to press against, the face of coal. The com- 
pressed air cylinder drives a piston-rod to which is 
attached a steel bit two inches in diameter pro- 
jecting from the front of the machine. This bit 
strikes the coal with sharp, swift blows, chipping 
it out in small fragments, and eats its way rapidly 
into the seam. The compressed air is carried to 
the machine in an iron pipe from the compressing 
engine, which is located at the mouth of the mine. 




198 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

When a machine is used, seven men usually work 
three rooms. Three of these men are contractors 
or partners, three of them are laborers employed 
by the contractors, and one of them, called the 
"scraper," is a laborer employed by the coal com- 
pany. When the channel has been cut a sufficient 
depth and distance the coal above it is brought 
down either by wedging or blasting. If blasting 
is to be resorted to it will be unnecessary to cut 
the vertical groove. If the bearing-in channel 
was cut above the floor, the bottom coal is then 
lifted by wedging, and broken up. The miners do 
the cutting and blasting, the laborers break up 
the coal and load it into the mine wagons, and the 
scraper is kept busy cleaning the cuttings away 
from the channels and attending to the lamps. 

The mine car track that is extended up into the 
room is of wooden rails, and the empty wagon is 
pushed in to the face by the laborers, and loaded 
and run out by them to the entry. Each wagon 
will hold a little more than a ton, and a mule will 
draw four wagons to the mouth of the drift. The 
wheels of the mine car are set close to each other, 
near the middle of the car, to facilitate its move- 
ment around sharp curves ; the doors at the ends 
of the car are swung from a bar hinge at the top, 
and the cars are dumped in the same manner as 
those in the anthracite region. In some of the 
bituminous mines a small locomotive is used to 
draw the trains of mine wagons from the working 



IN THE BITUMINOUS COAL MINES. 199 

parts of the mine to the opening. It will draw 
from twelve to sixteen wagons at a time, and will 
do the work of twenty mules. There is usually a 
separate split of the air current to supply the loco- 
motive road in order to keep the smoke out of the 
working rooms. 

When a set of rooms has been driven to its 
limit the miners then " draw back the rib ; " that 
is, take out the pillars between the rooms, .begin- 
ning at the face and working' back. Posts must 
be used freely to support the roof while this work 
is in progress, about sixty or seventy being nec- 
essary in drawing a rib. 

Ventilation here is obtained by both the fan 
and the f una ace systems* In mines that are 
worked below water level fire damp often accu- 
mulates, but where the coal does not descend at 
any point below the water-level line, there is no 
probability that mine gases will be found- 
As has already been said, the usual method of 
entry into the bituminous mines has been, and 
still is, by drift. But as the working faces of the 
mines recede farther and farther from the general 
lines of outcrop, it often becomes necessary to re- 
sort to the method of entry by shaft, and this lat- 
ter method will doubtless in time supersede the 
former almost entirely- The main shaft, as it is 
now constructed, is usually about twenty feet long 
by nine feet wide, and has three compartments, 
two for hoisting and one for ventilation and pump- 





200 COAL AND THE COAL MINES, 

ing. It rarely exceeds two hundred feet in depth. 
The hoisting apparatus is much like that in use in 
the anthracite districts* Air shafts from fifty to 
one hundred feet deep, sunk for purposes of ven- 
tilation and drainage, are frequent, and stair shafts 
in which are fixed ladders for the purpose of 
ascent and descent, and which may be used as air 
shafts also, are not uncommon. Slopes, like those 
in the anthracite regions., are not usual here ; the 
coal seams do not dip sufficiently to make them 
practicable. Narrow rock slopes are sometimes 
driven diagonally through the strata, at an incli- 
nation of twenty degrees or less, to strike the coal 
bed, but they are used only as air ways, as travel- 
ing ways for men and mules, and to serve as the 
" second opening " required by the mine law. 

In the bituminous regions coal breakers are 
unnecessary and are unknown. As the vertical 
planes of cleavage of the coal are at right angles 
to each other, and as the stratification is nearly 
horizontal, the coal when broken takes a cubical 
form, large blocks of it being made up of smaller 
cubes, and these of still smaller, to an almost mi- 
croscopic limit. All slate is separated from the 
coal as it is mined, and the refuse is piled up in 
the room. 

The mine wagon is loaded only with good coal, 
and is taken directly from the mine to a building 
which, with its appliances, is called a " tipple." It 
is here dumped into a screen, it runs from the 



IN THE BITUMINOUS COAL MINES. 201 

screen into a car or boat, and is then ready to be 
hauled or floated to market. 

If the opening of the mine is practically on the 
same level as the tipple the arrangements are very 
simple, as no extra motive power is required to 
get the cars to the dumping place. It is usual, 
however, to find the opening at a higher point 
than the tipple, since the latter must always be at 
the railroad track or on the bank of a river. It 
becomes necessary, therefore, in this case, to raise 
and lower the cars between the opening of the 
mine and the tipple. This is usually done by the 
inclined plane system, in which the loaded cars 
descending draw the light ones up. The same 
system is much used in the anthracite mines, and 
has already been explained. 

The railroad tipple consists simply of a frame 
building from forty to sixty feet long, fifteen feet 
high, and from eighteen to thirty feet wide. This 
structure is set upon four or five plain timber 
bents, and its floor is usually twenty-seven feet 
higher than the top of the track rails which run 
beneath the outer end of it. A platform on this 
floor is so adjusted by a single shaft that, when a 
loaded car is pushed on it, it tips forward to an 
angle of about thirty degrees. The end gate of 
the wagon is then opened and the coal runs out on 
to the screen. This screen is simply a set of longi- 
tudinal iron bars inclined outwardly at distances 
apart of one and one half inches. All coal that 



202 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

passes over these bars is called " lump coal " and 
is run into a sheet-iron pan suspended from the 
scales platform, where it is weighed, and it is then 
dropped directly into a car standing on the track 
below it. The coal which passed through the first 
set of bars has, in the mean time, fallen on to a 
second screen with bars only three quarters of an 
inch apart. The coal that passes over these bars 
is called nut coal, and is also weighed and dropped 
into the cars, while the coal that passes through 
the bars is called " slack." This is dropped into 
a shute, is carried by it into a car on the slack 
track, and is run thence to the dumping ground. 
When all three kinds of coal are loaded together 
it is called " run of mine," while lump and nut 
coal together make " three quarter coal." These 
tipples may, of course, be built with two sets of 
screens and platforms, and thus be made to do 
double work, and some of them are so built. 
Under the projecting end of the tipple there are 
usually four tracks ; the first or outside one for 
box-cars, the next for lump-coal cars, the next for 
nut-coal cars, and the last for cars for slack. 
Four men operate a single railroad tipple ; two 
dump and weigh the coal above, while the others 
trim and move the railroad cars on the track 
below. To this number a helper is often added, 
both above and below. Besides these men a boy 
is usually employed to rake the nut coal from the 
lower screening bars where it sticks and prevents 



IN THE BITUMINOUS COAL MINES. 203 

the slack from passing through. Sometimes it 
takes two boys to do this work properly. Boys 
are also employed to push the slack with a scraper 
down the shutes into the car on the slack track 
when the elevation of the tipple above the rails is 
not sufficient to afford the necessary grade. Bars 
are being largely superseded now by revolving 
screens for separating slack from nut coal ; they 
do the work far better, and make the employment 
of a raking boy unnecessary. 

The river tipple is operated in much the same 
way as the railroad tipple, except that its appara- 
tus must be so arranged as to accommodate itself 
to high or low water. The floor of the river 
tipple is usually placed from forty to fifty feet 
above low- water mark, and the weighing pan is 
held in position by a counter-weight, which may 
be raised or lowered at pleasure. A small sta- 
tionary engine, or a hand windlass, draws the 
empty boat or barge into position under that end 
of the tipple which projects over the water. 
About twice as many men are required to operate 
a river tipple as are necessary to operate a rail- 
road tipple, and while the railroad tipple costs 
but from two thousand to four thousand dollars 
the river tipple is built at an expense of from four 
thousand to ten thousand dollars. But even this 
latter figure is small when compared with the cost 
of an anthracite breaker, which may run anywhere 
from twenty thousand to one hundred thousand 
dollars. 




CHAPTER XV. 

THE BOY WORKERS AT THE MINES. 

In the coal mines of the United States boys are 
employed at two kinds of labor : to attend the 
doors on the traveling roads, and to drive the 
mules. This is known as inside work. Their out- 
side work consists in picking slate at the breaker, 
and in driving the mules that draw mine cars on 
the surface. No one of these different kinds of 
employment is such as to overtax the physical 
strength of boys of a proper age, but they are all 
confining, some are dangerous, and some are labo- 
rious. Yet the system of child labor in the coal 
mines of America has never been comparable to 
that which was formerly in vogue -in Great 
Britain. The British " Coal Mines Regulation 
Act " of 1872 remedied the then existing evils to 
a considerable extent ; but the hardships still to 
be endured by children in the British mines are 
greater than those which their American brothers 
must suffer. The act of 1872, just referred to, 
provides that boys under ten years of age shall not 
be employed under ground, and that bojs between 
ten and twelve years of age shall be allowed to 
work only in thin mines. It is the duty of these 



THE BOY WORKERS AT THE MINES. 205 

children to push the cars, or trams as they are 
called, from the working faces to the main road 
and back. Boys who are thus employed are called 
" hurriers " or "putters." They are often obliged 
to crawl on their hands and knees, pushing the car 
ahead of them, because the roof of the excavation 
is so low. That is why boys who are so young are 
allowed to work here ; because, being small, they 
can the more readily crawl through the passages 
cut in these thin seams, which often do not have a 
vertical measurement of more than from twenty to 
twenty-eight inches. The act of 1872 forbids the 
employment of females in the British mines ; but 
formerly not only boys but girls and women also 
worked underground. There was then no restric- 
tion as to age, and girls were sent into the mines 
to labor at an earlier age than were boys, because 
they were credited with being smarter and more 
obedient. It was common to find children of 
both sexes not more than six years old working 
underground; and girls of five years were em- 
ployed at the same tasks as boys of six or eight. 
They took the coal from the working faces in the 
thin mines to the foot of the pit. Sometimes they 
carried it, sometimes they drew it in little carts. 
The older children and young women had a sort 
of sledge, called a "eorve," on which they dragged 
the coal, but sometimes they preferred to carry it 
in baskets on their backs. They were called 
" pannier women." The girls tucked their hair up 




206 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

under their caps, dressed like their brothers, and 
in the darkness of the mine could scarcely be dis- 
tinguished from boys. And the girls and boys 
not only dressed alike, but worked alike, lived 
alike, and were treated alike at their tasks, and 
that treatment was rough and harsh at the very 
best. As the girls grew they were given harder 
work to do. On one occasion Mr. William 
Hunter, the mine foreman at Ormiston Colliery 
said that in the mines women always did the lift- 
ing or heavy part of the work, and that neither 
they nor the children were treated like human 
beings. " Females," he said, " submit to work in 
places in which no man nor lad could be got to 
labor. They work on bad roads, up to their knees 
in water, and bent nearly double. The conse- 
quence of this is that they are attacked with dis- 
ease, drag out a miserable existence, or are 
brought prematurely to the grave." Says Rob- 
ert Bold, the eminent miner : " In surveying the 
workings of an extensive colliery underground a 
married woman came forward, groaning under an 
excessive weight of coals, trembling in every nerve, 
and almost unable to keep her knees from sinking 
under her. On coming up she said in a plaintive, 
melancholy voice : ' Oh, sir ! this is sore, sore, 
sore work. I would to God that the first woman 
who tried to bear coals had broken her back and 
none ever tried it again.' " 

One cannot read of such things as these, of a 



THE BOY WORKERS AT TEE MINES. 207 

slavery that condemned even the babes to a life 
of wretched toil in the blackness of the mines, and 
then wonder that the great heart of Mrs. Brown- 
ing should have been wrenched by the contempla- 
tion of such sorrow until she gave voice to her 
feeling in that most pathetic and wonderful of 
all her poems, " The Cry of the Children." 

" Do ye hear the children weeping 1 , my brothers! 

Ere the sorrow conies with years ? 
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, 

And that cannot stop their tears. 
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows, 

The young birds are chirping in their nest, 
The young fawns are playing with the shadows, 

The young flowers are blooming toward the west. 
But the young, young- children, my brothers ! 

They are weeping bitterly ; 
They are weeping in the playtime of the others, 

In the country of the free. 

* ' ' For, oh ! ' say the children, c we are weary, 

And we cannot run or leap ; 
If we cared for any meadows, it were merely 

To drop down in them and sleep. 
Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping", 

We fall upon our faces trying to go, 
And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping, 

The reddest flower would look as pale as snow. 
For all day we drag our burden tiring, 

Through the coal dark underground, 
Or all day we drive the wheels of iron 

In the factories round and round.' 

' How long,' they say, ' how long, O cruel nation ! 

Will you stand to move the world on a child's heart, 
Stifle down, with a mailed heel, its palpitation, 
And tread onward to your throne amid the mart ? 




208 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

Our blood splashes upward, O gold heaper ! 

And your purple shows your path ; 
But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper 

Than the strong man in his Avrath. ' ' ' 

In the United States neither girls nor women 
have ever been employed in or about the mines. 
The legislative prohibition of such employment, 
enacted in Pennsylvania in 1885, was therefore 
unnecessary but not inappropriate. 

The general mine law of Pennsylvania of 1870, 
which was the first to limit the employment of boys 
in the mines according to their age, fixed twelve 
years as the age under which a boy might not 
work underground ; but maintained silence as to 
the age at which he might work at a colliery out- 
side. This provision was amended and enlarged 
by the act of 1885, which prohibited the employ- 
ment of boys under fourteen years of age inside 
the mines, and of boys under twelve years of age 
in or about the outside structures or workings of a 
colliery. 

The duties of a driver boy are more laborious 
than those of a door-tender, but less monotonous 
and tiresome than those of a slate picker or breaker- 
boy. When the mules are kept in the mines night 
and day, as they frequently are in deep workings, 
the driver must go down the shaft before seven 
o'clock, get his mule from the mine stable, bring 
him to the foot of the shaft, and hitch him to a 
trip of empty cars. He usually takes in to the 
working faces four empty cars and brings out four 



THE BOY WORKERS AT THE MINES. 209 

loaded ones. When he is ready to start in with 
his trip, he climbs into the forward car, cracks his 
whip about the beast's head, and goes off shouting. 
His whip is a long, braided leather lash, attached 
to a short stout stick for a handle. He may have 
a journey of a mile or more before reaching the 
foot of the first chamber he is to supply; but 
when he comes to it he unfastens the first car from 
the others and drives the mule up the chamber 
with it, leaving it at a convenient distance from 
the face. He continues this process at each of 
the chambers in succession, until his supply of 
empty cars is exhausted. At the foot of the last 
chamber which he visits he finds a loaded car to 
which he attaches his mule, and picking up other 
loaded cars on his way back, he makes up his 
return trip, and is soon on the long, unbroken 
journey to the shaft. There are sidings at inter- 
vals along the heading, where trips going in the 
opposite direction are met and passed, and where 
there is opportunity to stop for a moment and 
talk with or chaff some other driver boy. If 
there be a plane on the main road, either ascend- 
ing or descending from the first level, two sets of 
driver boys and mules are necessary, one set to 
draw cars between the breasts and the plane, and 
the other set to draw them between the plane and 
the shaft. Of course, in steep pitching seams, all 
cars are left at the foot of the chamber and are 
loaded there. There are two dangers to which 



210 



COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 



driver boys are chiefly subjected ; one is that of 
being crushed between cars, or between cars and 
pillars or props, and the other is that of being 
kicked or bitten by vicious mules. The boy must 
not only learn to drive, but he must learn to govern 
his beast and keep out of harm's way. He is 
generally sufficiently skillful and agile to do this, 
but it is not unusual to read of severe injuries to 
boys, given by kicking, bucking, or biting mules. 
If the mine in which the boy works is entered 
by drift or tunnel, his duties lie partly outside of 
it, since he must bring every trip of ears not only 
to the mouth of the opening but to the breaker or 
other dumping place, which may be located at a 
considerable distance from the entrance to the 
So that for a greater or less number of 



mine. 



times each day he has from ten minutes to half 
an hour in the open air. In the summer time, 
when the weather is pleasant, this occasional 
glimpse of out-of-doors is very gratifying- to him. 
He likes to be in the sunlight, to look out over 
the woods and fields, to feel the fresh wind blow- 
ing in his face, and to breathe an unpolluted 
atmosphere. But in the winter time, when it is 
cold, when the storms are raging, when the snow 
and sleet are whirled savagely into his face, then 
the outside portion of his trip is not pleasant. In 
the mine he finds a uniform temperature of about 
sixty degrees Fahrenheit. To go from this, within 
ten minutes, without additional clothing, into an 



THE BOY WORKERS AT THE MINES. 211 

atmosphere in which the mercury stands at zero, 
and where the wind is blowing a hurricane, is 
necessarily to suffer. It cannot be otherwise. 
So there is no lagging outside on winter days ; the 
driver boy delivers his loads, gets his empty cars, 
and hastens back to the friendly shelter of the 
mine. At such openings as these the mine stable 
is outside, and the boy must go there in the morn- 
ing to get his mule, and must leave him there 
when he quits work at night. Sometimes, when 
the mining is done by shaft or slope, there is a 
separate entrance for men and mules, a narrow 
tunnel or slope, not too steep, and in this case, 
though his duties lie entirely in the mine, the driver 
boy must take the mule in from the outside stable 
in the morning and bring him back at night. 

One afternoon I chanced to be in a certain 
mine in the Wyoming district, in company with 
the fire boss. We were standing in a passage 
that led to one of these mule ways. In the dis- 
tance we heard a clattering of hoofs, growing 
louder as it came nearer, and, as we stepped aside, 
a mule went dashing by with a boy lying close on 
his back, the flame from the little lamp in the 
boy's cap just a tiny backward streak of blue that 
gave no light. They had appeared from the in- 
tense darkness and had disappeared into it again 
almost while one could draw a breath. I looked 
at the fire boss inquiringly. 

" Oh ! that 's all right," he said, " they 've got 




212 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

through work and they 're going out, and the mule 
is in just as much of a hurry as the boy is." 

" But the danger," I suggested, " of racing at 
such speed through narrow, winding passages, in 
almost total darkness ! " 

" Oh ! " he replied, " that beast knows the way 
out just as well as I do, and he can find it as easy 
as if he could see every inch of it, and I don't 
know but what he can. Anyway the boy ain't 
afraid if the mule ain't." 

In deep mines, as has already been said, it is 
customary to build stables not far from the foot 
of the shaft, and to keep the mules there except 
when for any reason there is a long suspension 
of work. At many mines, however, the greater 
convenience of having the stables on the surface 
induces the operators to have the mules hoisted 
from the shaft every night and taken down every 
morning. They step on the carriage very de- 
murely, and ascend or descend without "making 
trouble. They are especially glad to go up to 
their stables at night. Where mules are fed in 
the mine, and especially in those mines that have 
stables in them, rats are usually found. How 
they get down a shaft is a mystery. The common 
explanation is that they go with the hay. But 
they take up their quarters in the mine, live, 
thrive, increase rapidly, and grow to an enormous 
size. They are much like the wharf rats that in- 
fest the wharves of great cities, both in size and 



THE BOY WORKERS AT THE MINES. 213 

ugliness. They are very bold and aggressive, and 
when attacked will turn on their enemy, whether 
man or beast, and fight to the death. There is a 
superstition among miners to the effect that when 
the rats leave a mine some great disaster is about 
to take place in it ; probably an extensive fall. 
Rats are hardly to be credited, however, with an 
instinct that would lead them to forecast such an 
event with more certainty than human experience 
and skill can do. 

But it is not improbable that the driver boy and 
his male will be superseded, at no distant day, by 
electricity. In one instance at least this new 
motive power has already been put into use. This 
is at the Lykens Valley Colliery of the Lykens 
Valley Coal Company, in Dauphin County, Penn- 
sylvania. 

The duty of an outside driver boy is to take the 
loaded cars from the head of the shaft or slope to 
the breaker, and to bring the empty ones back ; 
his work being all done in the open air. Of late 
this service, especially where the distance is con- 
siderable, is performed by a small locomotive, 
which draws trains of as many cars as can well be 
held together. The wages paid to inside driver 
boys by the Pennsylvania Coal Company in 1888 
were from one dollar to one dollar and ten cents a 
day, and to outside driver boys eighty-eight cents 
a day. 

The door boys are usually younger and smaller 




214 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

than the driver boys, and though their duty is not 
so laborious as that of the latter class, it is far 
more monotonous and tiresome. The door boy 
must be at his post when the first trip goes in 
in the morning, and must remain there till the 
last one comes out at night. He is alone all day, 
save when other boys and men pass back and 
forth through his door, and he has but little oppor- 
tunity for companionship. He fashions for him- 
self a rude bench to sit on ; sometimes he has a 
rope or other contrivance attached to his door by 
which he can open it without rising; but usually 
he is glad to move about a little to break the 
monotony of his task. There is little he can do 
to entertain himself, except perhaps to whittle. 
He seldom tries to read ; indeed, the light given 
forth by a miner's lamp is too feeble to read by. 
In rare cases the door boy extinguishes his light, 
on the score of economy, and sits in darkness, per- 
forming his duties by the light of the lamps of 
those who pass. But there are few who can en- 
dure this. It is hard enough to bear the oppres- 
sive silence that settles down on the neighborhood 
when no cars are passing ; if darkness be added 
to this the strain becomes too great, the effect too 
depressing, a child cannot bear it. The wages of 
the door boy are about sixty-five cents per day. 

Although the duties of the breaker boy or slate 
picker are more laborious and more monotonous 
than those of either driver boy or door tender, he 



THE BOY WORKERS AT THE MINES. 215 

does not receive so high a rate of wages as either 
of them. His daily compensation is only from 
fifty to sixty-five cents, and he works ten hours a 
day. At seven o'clock in the morning he must 
have climbed the dark and dusty stairway to the 
screen room, and taken his place on the little 
bench across the long shute. The whistle screams, 
the ponderous machinery is set in motion, the iron- 
teethed rollers begin to revolve heavily, crunching 
the big lumps of coal as they turn, the deafening 
noise breaks forth, and then the black, shallow 
streams of broken coal start on their journey down 
the iron - sheathed shutes, to be screened and 
cleaned, and picked and loaded. 

At first glance it would not seem to be a diffi- 
cult task to pick slate, but there are several things 
to be taken into consideration before a judgment 
can properly be made up in the matter. To begin 
with, the work is confining and monotonous. The 
boy must sit on his bench all day, bending over 
constantly to look down at the coal that is passing 
beneath him. His tender hands must become 
toughened by long and harsh contact with sharp 
pieces of slate and coal, and after many cuts and 
bruises have left marks and scars on them for a 
lifetime. He must breathe an atmosphere thick 
with the dust of coal, so thick that one can barely 
see across the screen room when the boys are sit- 
ting at their tasks. It is no wonder that a person 
long subjected to the irritating presence of this 








216 COAL AND THE COAL MINES, 

dust in his bronchial tubes and on his lungs is 
liable to suffer from the disease known as "miner's 
consumption." In the hot days of summer the 
screen-room is a stifling place. The sun pours its 
rays upon the broad, sloping roof of the breaker, 
just overhead ; the dust-laden atmosphere is never 
cleared or freshened by so much as a breath of 
pure sweet air, and the very thought of green fields 
and blossoming flowers and the swaying branches 
of trees renders the task here to be performed 
more burdensome. Yet even this is not so bad as 
it is to work here in the cold days of winter. It 
is almost impossible to heat satisfactorily by any 
ordinary method so rambling a structure as a 
breaker necessarily is, and it is quite impossible to 
divide the portion devoted to screening and pick- 
ing into closed rooms. The screen-rooms are, 
therefore, always cold. Stoves are often set up in 
them, but they radiate heat through only a limited 
space, and cannot be said to make the room warm. 
Notwithstanding the presence of stoves, the boys 
on the benches shiver at their tasks, and pick slate 
with numb fingers, and suffer from the extreme 
cold through many a winter day. But science 
and the progress of ideas are coming to their aid. 
In some breakers, recently erected, steam-heating 
pipes have been introduced into the screen-rooms 
with great success ; the warmth and comfort given 
by them to the little workers is beyond measure- 
ment. Fans have been put into the breakers, also, 




o 



o 

Q_ 



THE BOY WORKERS AT THE MINES. 217 

to collect and carry away the dust and keep the air 
of the picking-room clean and fresh, and electric 
lamps have been swung from the beams to be 
lighted in the early mornings and late afternoons, 
that the young toilers may see to do their work. 
Indeed, such improvements as these pass beyond 
the domain of science and progress into that of 
humanitarianism. 

When night comes no laborer is more rejoiced 
at leaving his task than is the breaker boy. One 
can see his eyes shine and his white teeth gleam 
as he starts out into the open air, while all else, 
hands, face, clothing, are thickly covered with coal 
dust, are black and unrecognizable. But he is 
happy because his day's work is done and he is 
free, for a few hours at least, from the tyranny of 
the " cracker boss." For, in the estimation of the 
picker boys, the cracker boss is indeed the most 
tyrannical of masters. How else could they re- 
gard a man whose sole duty it is to be constantly 
in their midst, to keep them at their tasks, to urge 
them to greater zeal and care, to repress all boy- 
ish freaks, to rule over them almost literally with 
a rod of iron ? But, alas ! the best commentary 
on the severity of his government is that it is 
necessary. 

As has already been said, the day is evi- 
dently not far distant when the work which the 
breaker boy now does will be performed almost 
wholly by machinery. And this will be not alone 



218 



COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 



because the machine does its work better, more 
surely, more economically, than the breaker boy 
has done his, but it will be also because the requi- 
site number of boys for breaker work will not be 
obtainable. Even now it is more than difficult to 
keep the ranks of the slate pickers full. Parents 
hi the coal regions of to-day have too much regard 
for the health, the comfort, the future welfare of 
their children, to send them generally to such 
grinding tasks as these. This is one of the signs 
of that advancing civilization which has already 
lifted girls and women from this, for them, ex- 
hausting and degrading labor at the collieries ; 
which is lessening, one by one, the hardships of 
the boys who still toil there ; which, it is fondly 
hoped, will in the course of time give to all chil- 
dren the quiet of the school-room, the freedom of 
the play-ground, and the task that love sets, in 
place of that irksome toil that stunts the body and 
dwarfs the soul. It is now mainly from the homes 
of the very poor that the child-workers at the 
collieries are recruited, and the scant wages that 
they earn may serve to keep bread in the mouths 
of the younger children of their households and 
clothing on their own backs. 

Accidents to boys employed at the mines are of 
frequent occurrence. Scarcely a day passes but 
the tender flesh of some poor little fellow is cut or 
bruised, or his bones twisted and broken. It is 
only the more serious of these accidents that reach 



THE BOY WORKERS AT THE MINES. 219 

the notice of the mine inspector and are returned 
in his annual report. Yet, to the humanitarian 
and the lover of children, these annual returns 
tell a sad story. The mine inspector's reports for 
1887 show that in the anthracite region alone dur- 
ing that year eighteen boys fifteen years of age 
and under were killed while fulfilling the duties 
of their employment in and about the coal mines, 
and that seventy-three others were seriously in- 
jured, many of them doubtless maimed for life. 
These figures tell their own story of sorrow and of 
suffering. 

Yet with all their hardships it cannot be said 
that the boys who work in the collieries are wholly 
unhappy. It is difficult, indeed, to so limit, con- 
fine, and gird down a boy that he will not snatch 
some enjoyment from his life ; and these boys seek 
to get much. 

One who has been long accustomed to them can 
generally tell the nature of their several occupa- 
tions by the way in which they try to amuse them- 
selves. The driver boys are inclined to be rude 
and boisterous in their fun, free and impertinent 
in their manner, and chafe greatly under restraint. 
The slate pickers, confined all day at their tasks, 
with no opportunity for sport of any kind, are 
inclined to bubble over when night and freedom 
come, but, as a rule, they are too tired to display 
more than a passing effort at jocularity. Door 
boys are quiet and contemplative. Sitting so long 



220 



COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 



alone in the darkness they become thoughtful, 
sober, sometimes melancholy. They go silently 
to their homes when they leave the mine ; they do 
not stop to play tricks or to joke with their fel- 
lows ; they do not run, nor sing, nor whistle. 
Darkness and silence are always depressing, and 
so much of it in these young lives cannot help 
but sadden without sweetening them. We shall 
never see, in America, those horrors of child 
slavery that drew so passionate a protest from 
the great-hearted Mrs. Browning, but certainly, 
looking at the progress already made, it is not too 
much to hope for that the day will come when no 
child's hand shall ever again be soiled by the 
labor of the mine. 

It will be a fitting close to this chapter, and 
will be an act of justice to the memory of a brave 
and heroic boy, to relate the story of Martin 
Crahan's sacrifice at the time of the disaster at the 
West Pittston shaft. Martin was a driver boy, of 
humble parentage, poor and unlearned. He was 
in the mine when the fire in the breaker broke 
out, and he ran, with others, to the foot of the 
shaft. But just as he was about to step on the 
carriage that would have taken him in safety to 
the surface he bethought him of the men on the 
other side of the shaft, who might not have heard 
of the fire, and his brave heart prompted him to 
go to them with the alarm. He asked another 
boy to go with him, but that boy refused. He did 



THE BOY WORKERS AT THE MINES. 221 

not stop to parley ; lie started at once alone. But 
while lie ran through the dark passage on his 
errand of mercy, the carriage went speeding, for 
the last time, up the burning shaft. He gave the 
alarm and returned, in breathless haste, with 
those whom he had sought ; but it was too late, 
the cage had already fallen. When the party was 
driven away from the foot of the shaft by the 
smoke and the gas, he, in some unexplained way, 
became separated from the rest, and wandered off 
alone. The next day a rescuing party found him 
in the mine-stable, dead. He lay there beside the 
body of his mule. Deprived of the presence of 
human beings in the hours of that dreadful night, 
he had sought the company of the beast that had 
long been his companion in daily labor — and they 
died together. 

But he had thought of those who were dear to 
him, for on a rough board near by he had written 
with chalk the name of his father and of his 
mother, and of a little cousin who had been named 
for him. He was only twelve years old when he 
died, but the title of hero was never more fairly 
earned than it was by him. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



MINERS AND THEIR WAGES. 



A GOOD miner may be called a " skilled work- 
man," and, as such, he is entitled to greater com- 
pensation for his labor than an ordinary workman. 
He expects it and gets it. There are two princi- 
pal systems by which payments are made to min- 
ers. The first is according to the number of cubic 
yards of coal cut, and the second is according to 
the number of tons of coal mined and sent out. 
The first, which is prevalent in the regions of 
steep-pitching seams, is followed because the coal 
may remain in the chamber for an indefinite time 
after being cut. The second, which in the Wyo- 
ming region is almost universal, is somewhat more 
complicated. A chamber is taken by two miners, 
but the account on the books of the coal company 
is usually kept in the name of only one of them, 
who is held to be the responsible member of the 
firm. For instance, "Patrick Collins & Co." 
work a chamber in Law Shaft, and the firm is so 
designated. The first thing they do is to adopt 
some distinctive mark which may be chalked on 
the sides of their loaded cars to distinguish them 
from the loaded cars from other chambers. The 



MINERS AND THEIR WAGES. 223 

letters of the alphabet are frequently used by min- 
ers, but, in default of these, some simple design 
that cannot readily be mistaken for any other is 
put into service. The triangle A is a very com- 
mon symbol with them, so is the long, hori- 
zontal line, crossed by short vertical ones, thus : 

— I — I I — '* '^ ie m ^ ners ca H this a candle. 

When a car has been loaded the symbol is chalked 
on the side of it, together with a number which 
tells how many cars have been sent from the 
chamber during the day. For instance, when a 
mine car appears at the surface marked " A 5 " it 
means that the car is from a certain chamber des- 
ignated by that symbol, and that this is the fifth 
car which has been sent from that chamber during 
the day. On its way from the head of the breaker 
to the dumping cradle, the loaded car passes over 
the platform of the weighing scales and registers 
its weight on the scale beam. This weight is 
quickly read by the weigh-master, is transferred 
to his book, and goes to make up the daily re- 
port. In some districts a system in which tickets 
are used instead of chalk marks is in vogue, and 
in other districts duplicate checks are employed, 
but everywhere the general features remain the 
same. 

In order to get a chamber from any of the large 
mining corporations, a miner must apply in per- 
son to the mining superintendent. He must come 
well recommended, or he must be known as a skill- 



224 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

ful, industrious, and temperate workman. The 
responsibility of driving a chamber properly is not 
a small one, and mining companies choose to take 
as little risk as possible in the selection of their 
men. Having accepted an applicant for a cham- 
ber, the company makes a contract with him, 
usually a verbal one, to pay him at a certain rate 
per ton or yard for the coal mined by him. The 
rate, though not wholly uniform, on account of the 
greater or less difficulty of cutting coal at the dif- 
ferent collieries, is practically the same through- 
out an entire district. 

A miner working at full time and in a good 
seam will send out enough coal each month to 
amount, at the contract price, to $150. But his 
expenses for laborers' wages, powder, oil, fuse, etc., 
will amount to $ 75 per month, leaving him a net 
income of $75 per month. The laborer is also 
paid according to the number of tons of coal sent 
out, and his wages will probably average $2 per 
day. It is not often in these days of thin seams 
that these rates of income are exceeded. And 
when the mines are in operation only a portion of 
the time, as is now often the case, these figures 
are seriously reduced. 

The subject of wages frequently has been under 
discussion between miners and operators, and the 
differences of opinion on it have been prolific of 
many strikes. By some corporations and at some 
collieries a sliding scale has been adopted. That 



MINERS AND THEIR WAGES, 225 

Is, the miner has been paid, not at a fixed rate, 
but at a rate which constantly adjusts itself to 
the market price of coal. The objection to this 
method is said to be that the great companies who 
practically control the anthracite coal business 
form syndicates, fix the market price of their coal 
for a certain period of time, and then limit the 
output of each member of the syndicate to a cer- 
tain number of tons during that period. 

It is certain that no scheme of payment has yet 
been devised which is perfectly satisfactory to the 
great body of workers in the mines. But it is 
true also that employer and employee are working 
together more harmoniously now than they have 
worked at any time in the past, and that long and 
stubborn strikes of miners are growing, year by 
year, less frequent. It is to be hoped that the 
time will come when even the strike will not be 
considered necessary as a weapon of defense for 
the workman. As a rule strikes result in loss, and 
in loss only, to both capital and labor ; and, as a 
rule also, labor suffers from them more than does 
capital, and this is the saddest feature of the case. 
Hon. Carroll D. Wright, the National Commis- 
sioner of Labor, has compiled the statistics of min- 
ers' strikes in Pennsylvania for the years 1881 to 
1886 inclusive. His tables show that of 880 such 
strikes, which was the total number that occurred 
during the period named, 186 succeeded, 52 partly 
succeeded, and 642 failed. The loss to employers 






226 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

resulting from these strikes was $1,549,219 ; the 
loss to employees was $5,850,382 ; and the assist- 
ance given to the strikers during the periods of 
suspension amounted to $101,053. These figures 
form the best commentary to be had on the sub- 
ject of strikes; they are eloquent with tales of 
hardship, of suffering, and of despair. 

In those regions which have had long immu- 
nity from strikes, and in which work at full time 
has been the rule, the mine-workers are not only 
comfortable, but frequently are prosperous. They 
rarely occupy rooms in the cheap tenement houses 
of the towns, even if such occupancy would be to 
their convenience. They prefer to live in the out- 
lying districts, where they can have homes of their 
own and gardens that they may cultivate. In the 
colliery villages the lots are usually laid out and 
sold or rented by the mining company to its work- 
men. Rent is not high, and, in case of sale, a 
long term contract is given, so that payments are 
in easy installments. The miner prefers to own 
his house and lot. Such ownership has a tend- 
ency to impress any man with the importance and 
responsibility of his duty as a citizen, and the 
miner is no exception to the rule. He is apt to 
waste neither his time nor his money when he has 
property and a family to care for. He tries, too, 
to lay by something for a rainy day ; he knows that 
the probabilities are that either he or his family 
will eventually need it. As his hours of labor are 



MINERS AND THEIR WAGES. 227 

comparatively short he has considerable leisure 
which he may spend profitably or foolishly as he 
will. Many of the men spend this leisure work- 
ing in their gardens or about their premises. It is 
seldom that any of them go so far as to have regu- 
lar extra employment to occupy their time while 
out of the mines. Indeed the prevailing tendency 
among miners is to do as little work as possible 
outside of the mines. The opinion seems to be 
prevalent among them that when a miner has cut 
his coal he has done his full duty for the day, and 
is entitled then to rest and recreation. He does 
not take kindly to other kinds of work. He rarely 
deserts his occupation of mining to take up any 
other calling, and it may be said that after he has 
passed middle age he never does. There is a fas- 
cination to the old miner about the dark cham- 
bers, the black walls, the tap of the drill, the 
crash of falling coal, the smell of powder smoke 
in the air, a fascination that is irresistible. He 
would almost rather die in the familiar gloom of 
the mine than live and toil in the sunlight on the 
surface. Years of walking under the low mine 
roofs have bent his back, have thrown his head 
and shoulders forward, have given him that long 
swinging stride characteristic of old miners. His 
face is always pale ; this is due, no doubt, to the 
absence of sunlight in his working place ; but, 
as a rule, his general health is good ; except when 
he has worked for a long time in dry and dusty 



228 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

mines. In that case he is apt to find himself, 
sooner or later, a victim to the disease known as 
" miner's consumption." The miner's appearance, 
as he passes along the street or road on his way 
home from his work, is, to eyes unaccustomed to 
the sight, anything but favorable. He wears 
heavy, hobnailed shoes or boots, flannel shirt, 
coarse jacket and pantaloons, all of them black 
with coal dirt and saturated with oil. He has a 
habit, when he comes from his work, of throwing 
his coat loosely about his shoulders, and wearing 
it so as he goes to his home. He usually wears a 
cap on his head, sometimes a slouch hat, rarely the 
helmet or fireman's hat with which artists are 
accustomed to picture him. This latter is too 
heavy and clumsy for common use ; he only puts 
it on when working in places where w r ater comes 
down freely on his head. Hooked to the front of 
his cap is the little tin lamp already described. 
When he goes to or comes from his work in the 
dark he allows it to burn and light him on his way. 
His face and hands are also black with coal dirt 
and powder smoke, and his features are hardly 
recognizable. The predominating race among the 
mine workers is the Irish, next in point of num- 
bers comes the Welsh, then follow the Scotch and 
English, and, finally, the German. Of late years, 
however, Hungarian, Italian, and Russian labor- 
ers have come to the mines in large numbers, espe- 
cially in the southern districts. These people can 



MINERS AND THEIR WAGES. 229 

hardly be compared with the English or German 
speaking races ; they do not become citizens of the 
country, have in the main no family life, and are, 
in a certain sense, slaves whose masters are their 
own countrymen. 

In speaking of the characteristics of the mine 
workers as a class, it may be well, and it cer- 
tainly is just, to correct a misapprehension con- 
cerning them which has become prevalent. From 
reading the descriptions given by newspaper cor- 
respondents and by certain writers of fiction, 
many people have come to think that all miners 
are little less than outlaws, that they are rude, 
ignorant, brutal in their instincts, and blind in 
their passions and animosities. This is very far 
indeed from the truth. Mine workers, as a class, 
are peaceful, law-abiding, intelligent citizens. 
That they are economical and industrious is well 
attested by the comfortable appearance of their 
homes, and the modest deposits that are made, in 
large numbers, in the numerous miner's savings 
banks of the different districts. There are, in- 
deed, among them those who are intemperate, 
those who are coarse and violent, a disgrace to 
themselves and a menace to society. These are 
always the ones who come to the surface at a time 
when strained relations exist between employers 
and employees, and by their harsh language and 
unlawful conduct in the name of oppressed labor 
call down just retribution on themselves, but un- 



230 COAL AND THE COAL MINES. 

just condemnation on the true mine workers, who 
compose ninety-nine one hundredths of the class, 
but who do not go about drinking, ranting, de- 
stroying property, and inciting to crime. The pro- 
portion of " good-for-naughts " among the miners, 
however, is no greater than it is among any other 
class of workmen having the same numbers, and 
the same advantages and disadvantages. With 
the exception of the Hungarians, Russians, Ital- 
ians, and Poles, of whom mention has already 
been made, the miners and their families com- 
pare favorably with any class of workers in the 
same grade of labor in America. Many of them 
indeed attain to prominent and responsible posi- 
tions in business and society. Not a few of the 
clerks, merchants, contractors, mining engineers, 
bankers, lawyers, preachers, of the coal regions 
of to-day have stepped into those positions from 
the chambers of the mines, and have filled them 
admirably. The miner is fond of his family ; 
his children are dear to him, and, whenever the 
grim necessities of life permit, he sends them to 
the schools instead of to the mines or breakers. 
He wishes to prepare them for a larger enjoyment 
of life than he himself has had, even though that 
life should be spent in the occupation which he 
himself has followed. And, indeed, there are few 
other occupations in which the possibilities of ad- 
vancement are so great and so favorable. There 
must be mine bosses, mine inspectors, mine super- 



MINERS AND THEIR WAGES. 231 

intendents, and many of them, and they are, as 
a rule, promoted from the ranks. Young men of 
character, skill, and judgment are almost sure to 
step into the higher places. 

If it were not for two evils that constantly 
menace and hamper him, the coal miner of to-day 
would be the most favored of workmen. These 
twin evils are strikes and lockouts. Abolish them 
and there would be no more comfortable, happy, 
and generally prosperous class of people in Amer- 
ica than the workers in the coal mines. 



GLOSSARY OF MINING TEEMS. 



After damp. The mixture of gases resulting from the 
burning of fire damp. 

Air shaft. A vertical opening into a mine for the passage 
of air. 

Airway. Any passage in the mine along which an air cur- 
rent passes ; but the term is commonly applied to that 
passage which is driven, for ventilating purposes, paral- 
lel to and simultaneously with the gangway. 

Anticlinal. A fold of strata in which the inclination of the 
sides of the fold is from the axis downward. 

Barrier pillars. Large pillars of coal left at a boundary 

line, or on the outskirts of a squeeze. 
Basin. The hollow formed by a fold of the seam ; any 

large area of included coal. 
Battery. In steep-pitching seams, a wooden structure built 

across the shute to hold the mined coal back. 
Bearing in. Cutting a horizontal groove at the bottom or 

side of the face of a breast. 
Bed. Any separate stratum of rock or coal. 
Bench. A horizontal section of the coal seam, included be- 
tween partings of slate or shale. 
Black damp. Carbonic acid gas ; known also as choke 

damp. 
Blossom. Decomposed coal, indicating the presence of an 

outcrop. 
Blower. A forcible and copious discharge of gas from a 

cavity in the coal seam. 



234 



GLOSSARY OF MINING TERMS. 



Bony coal. Coal containing in its composition slaty or 
argillaceous material. 

Bo7~e-hole. A bole of small diameter drilled or bored, either 
vertically or horizontally, through the measures or in the 
coal ; usually, a hole drilled vertical!}' for prospecting 
purposes. 

Brattice. A partition made of boards or of brattice cloth, 
and put up to force the air current to the face of the 
workings. 

Breaker. A building, with its appliances, used in the prep- 
aration of anthracite coal for the market. 

Break-through. A cross-heading or entrance, used in the 
bituminous mines. 

Breast. The principal excavation in the mine from which 
coal is taken ; known also as chamber. 

Broken coal. One of the regular sizes of prepared anthra- 
cite. 

Buckwheat coal. One of the regular sizes of prepared 
anthracite. 

Buggy. A small car or wagon used for transporting coal 

from the working face to the gangway. 

Buntons. The timbers placed crosswise of a shaft down its 
entire depth, dividing it into vertical compartments. 

Butt. In bituminous coal seams, the vertical "planes of 
cleavage at right angles to the face cleavage. 

Butty. A comrade ; a fellow-worker in the same cham- 
ber. 



Cage. See Carriage. 

Carriage. The apparatus on which coal is hoisted in a 

shaft. 
Cartridge pin. A round stick of wood on which the paper 

tube for the cartridge is formed. 
* Cave-hole. A depression at the surface, caused by a fall of 

roof in the mine. 
Chain pillars. Heavy pillars of coal, lining one or both 



GLOSSARY OF MINING TERMS. 235 

sides of the gangway, and left for the protection of that 

passage. 
Chamber. See Breast. 

Chestnut coal. One of the regular sizes of prepared an- 
thracite. 
Choice damp. See After-damp. 

Cleavage. The property of splitting on a certain plane. 
Collar. The upper horizontal crosspiece uniting the legs 

in the timbering of a drift, tunnel, slope, or gangway. 
Colliery. All the workings of one mine, both underground 

and at the surface. 
Conglomerate. The rock strata lying next beneath the coal 

measures. 
Counter-gangway . A gangway which is tributary to the 

main gangway, and from which a new section of coal is 

worked. 
Cracker boss. The officer in charge of the screen room in 

a breaker. 
Creep. A crush in which the pillars are forced down into 

the floor or up into the roof of the mine. 
Cribbing. The timber lining of a shaft, extending usually 

from the surface to bed-rock. 
Crop-fall. A caving in of the surface at the outcrop. 
Cross-heading. A narrow opening for ventilation, driven 

through a wall of coal separating two passages or breasts. 
Crush. - A settling downward of the strata overlying a por- 
tion of an excavated coal seam. 
Culm. All coal refuse finer than buckwheat size. 

Dip. The angle which any inclined stratum makes with a 
horizontal line. 

Door boy. A boy who opens and shuts the door placed 
across any passageway in the mines to control the direc- 
tion of the ventilating current. 

Double entry. One of the systems by which openings into 
the bituminous coal mines are made. 



236 



GLOSSARY OF MINING TERMS. 



Downcast. The passage or way through which air is drawn 
into a mine. 

Drift. A water-level entrance to a mine, driven in from 
the surface on the coal. 

Drill. Any tool used for horiug holes in the rock or coal. 

Driving. Excavating any horizontal passage in or into the 
mines. 

Drum. A revolving cylinder, at the head of any hoisting- 
way, on which the winding rope is coiled. 

Egg coal. One of the regular sizes of prepared anthracite. 
-Entrance. See Cross-heading. 

Entry. The main entrance and traveling road in bitumi- 
nous mines. 



Face. The end wall at the inner or working extremity of 
any excavation in or into the mines. In bituminous mines 
the vertical plane of cleavage at right angles to the butt 
cleavage. 

Fan. A machine used to force a ventilating current of air 
through a mine. 

Fault. A displacement of strata in which the measures on 
one side of a fissure are pushed up above the correspond- 
ing measures on the other side. 

Fire-board. A blackboard, fixed near the main entrance 
of a mine, on which the fire boss indicates each morning 
the amount and location of dangerous gases. 

Fire boss. An official whose duty it is to examine the work- 
ings for accumulations of dangerous gases. 

Fire clay. The geological formation which is usually found 
immediately underlying a coal bed. 

Fire damp. Light carbureted hydrogen. 

Fissure. A separation of rock or coal across the measures. 

Floor. The upper surface of the stratum immediately 
underlying a coal seam. 



GLOSSARY OF MINING TERMS. 237 

Gangivay. An excavation or passageway, driven in the 
coal, at a slight grade, forming the base from which the 
other workings of the mine are begun. 

Gas, Fire damp. 

Gob. The refuse separated from the coal and left in the 
mine. 

Guides. Narrow vertical strips of timber at each side of 
the carriage way in shafts, to steady and guide the car- 
riage in its upward or downward movement. 

Gunboat. A car used for hoisting coal on steep slopes. 

Head-frame. The frame erected at the head of a shaft to 
support the sheaves and hold the carriage. 

Heading. Synonymous with gangway. Any separate con- 
tinous passage used as a traveling way or as an air- 
way. 

Hopper. A feeding shute or pocket in a breaker. 

Horseback. A small ridge in the roof or floor of a coal 
seam. 

Inside slope. An inclined plane in a mine, on which coal is 
hoisted from a lower to a higher level. 

Jacket. One of the sections or frames of wire mesh of which 
a revolving screen is made up. 

Keeps. Projections of wood or iron on which the carriage 
rests while it is in place at the head of the shaft. 

Lagging. Small timbers or planks driven in behind the 
legs and over the collars to give additional support to the 
sides and roof of the passage. 

Legs. The inclined sticks on which the collar rests in 
gangway, tunnel, drift, and slope timbering. 

Lift. All the workings driven from one level in a steep- 
pitching seam. 



238 



GLOSSARY OF MINING TERMS. 



\ 



Loading place. The lowest extremity of the breaker, where 

prepared coal is loaded into railway cars. 
Lump coal. The largest size of prepared anthracite. 

Manway. A passageway in or into the mine, used as a 

footway for workmen. 
Mouth. The opening, at the surface, of any way into the 

mines. 



Needle. An instrument used in blasting coal, with which a 
channel is formed through the tamping for the entrance 
of the squib. 

Nut coal. One of the regular sizes of bituminous coal. 

Opening. Any excavation in or into a mine. 

Operator. The person, firm, or corporation working a col- 
liery. 

Outcrop. That portion of any geological stratum which 
appears at the surface. 

Output. The amount of coal produced from any mine, or 
from any area of country. 

Parting. The layer of slate or bony coal which separates 

two benches of a coal seam. 
—Pea coal. One of the regular sizes of prepared anthracite. 

Picking shute. A shute in the breaker from which the 
pieces of slate are picked out by a boy as they pass down 
with the coal. 

Pillar. A column or body of coal left unmined to support 
the roof. 

Pillar and breast. The name of a common mining method. 

Pinch. See Crush. 

Pitch. See Dip. 

Plane. Any incline on which a track is laid for the purpose 
of lowering or hoisting coal. 

Pockets. Receptacles at the lower ends of shutes, in break- 
ers, from which coal is loaded into railway cars. 



GLOSSARY OF MINING TERMS. 239 

Post, A wooden prop to support the roof in bituminous 
mines. 

Prop. A timber set at right angles to the seam, in anthra- 
cite mines, to support the roof. 

Prospecting. Searching for indications of coal on the sur- 
face, and testing coal seams from the surface. 

Pump way. That compartment of a shaft or slope clown 
which the pump rods and pipes are extended. 

Rib. The side of an excavation as distinguished from the 
end or face. 

Rob. To mine coal from the pillars after the breasts are 
worked out. 

Rock tunnel. A tunnel driven through rock strata. 

Rolls. In breakers, heavy iron or steel cylinders set with 
teeth, used for breaking coal. 

Roof. The stratum immediately overlying a coal seam. 
The rock or coal overhead in any excavation. 

Room. Synonymous with breast or chamber ; used in bitu- 
minous mines. 

Safety lamp. A lamp that can be carried into inflammable 
gases without igniting them. 

Scraper. A tool used for cleaning out bore holes in 
blasting. 

Screen. Any apparatus used for separating coal into differ- 
ent sizes ; usually, the revolving cylinder of wire mesh in 
a breaker. 

Seam. A stratum of coal. 

Separator. A machine for picking slate. 

Shaft. A vertical entrance into a mine. 

Sheave. The wheel in the head-frame that supports the 
winding rope. 

Shift. The time during which a miner or laborer works 
continuously, alternating with some other similar period. 

Shute. A narrow passageway through which coal descends 



240 GLOSSARY OF MINING TERMS. 

by gravity from the foot of the breast to the gangway; 

an inclined trough, in a breaker, down which coal slides 

by gravity. 
Single entry. One of the systems by which bituminous 

mines are entered. 
Slack. The dirt from bituminous coal. 
Slate picker. A boy who picks slate from coal. A machine 

used for the same purpose. 
Slope. An entrance to a mine driven down through an 

inclined coal seam. Inside slope : a passage in the mine 

driven down through the seam, by which to bring coal 

up from a lower level. 
Slope carriage. A platform on wheels on which cars are 

raised and lowered in steep slopes. 
Smut. See Blossom. 

Split. A branch of a ventilating air current. 
Spread. The bottom width of a slope, drift, tunnel, or 

gangway between the legs of the timbering. 
Squeeze. See Crush. 
Squib. A powder cracker used for igniting the cartridge 

in blasting. 
Steamboat coal. One of the regular sizes of prepared 

anthracite. 
Stopping. A wall built across an entrance or any passage 

to control the ventilating current. 
Stove coal. One of the regular sizes of prepared an- 
thracite. 
Strike. The direction of a line drawn horizontally along 

any stratum. 
Stripping. Mining coal by first removing the surface down 

to the coal bed ; open working. 
Sump. A basin in mines entered by a slope or shaft, in 

which the water of the mine is collected to be pumped 

out. 
Swamp. A depression in the seam. 
Synclinal. A fold of strata in which the inclination of the 

sides is from the axis upward. 



GLOSSARY OF MINING TERMS. 241 

Tipple, In the bituminous regions, a building in which coal 

is dumped, screened, and loaded into boats or cars. 
Trapper. See Door boy. 
Traveling way. A passageway for men and mules in or 

into the mines. 
Trip. The number of cars less than enough to constitute a 

train drawn at one time by any motive power. 
Tunnel. An opening into a mine driven horizontally across 

the measures. 

Under-day. See Fire clay. 

Underholing. See Bearing in. 

Upcast. An opening from a mine through which air is 
taken out. 

Vein, Used (improperly) synonymously with seam, bed, 
or stratum. 

Wagon. A mine car. 

Waste. Gob ; coal dirt. 

Water level. An entrance into or passage in a mine, driven 

with just sufficient grade to carry off water. 
White damp. Carbonic oxide. 
Wings. See Keeps. 
Work, To mine. 

Working face. A face at which mining is being done. 
Workings. The excavations of a mine, taken as a whole ; 

or, more particularly, that portion of the mine in which 

mining is being done. 



v 



INDEX. 



Accidents resulting from falls, 126; 
to boys, 218. 

Act of 1885, 88. 

After damp, composition of, etc., 167. 

Air currents in mines, 148, 149. 

Air, deterioration of, in mines, 147, 
152. 

Airways, beginning of, 95. 

Allen, Nicholas, 49, 62. 

Ancients, use of coal by, 35. 

Animal life of Carboniferous era, 18. 

Anthracite coal, analysis of, 6 ; com- 
mercial sizes of, 181 ; description 
of, 8; ignition of, 59; of bitumi- 
nous origin, 25; skill in mining, 
192. 

Anticlinals, 25. 

Appalachian Range, 3. 

Archean time, 3. 

Areas of coal measures, 31 ; of Penn- 
sylvania coal fields, 33, 34. 

Avondale Mine, disaster at, 173. 

Baltimore vein, 75. 

Basin in a coal seam, 29. 

Battery in steep chambers, 108. 

Bearing in, in bituminous mines, 197. 

Benches in coal seams, 23-115. 

Bituminous coal, analysis of, 7 ; de- 
scription of 8 ; process of mining, 
194. 

Black damp, composition, etc., 169. 

Blasting in mines, 119, 120, 125, 131. 

Blossom of coal, 77. 

Blower of gas, 160. 

Boys, accidents to, 218 ; amusements 
of, 219 ; at tipple work, 202 ; char- 
acteristics of, 217; duties of, at 
breaker, 215 ; in British coal mines, 
205. 

Boy door-tenders, duties of, 214. 

Boy drivers, duties of, 210. 

Braddock's road, 40. 

Brattice at face of chamber, 103. 

Breaker, description of, 179 ; loca- 
tion of, 178 ; 183 ; passage of coal 
through, 185; picking shutes in, 



186 ; structure and appearance of, 

184. 
Break through, in bituminous mines, 

195. 
Breast. See Chamber. 
Bryden, Alexander, 143. 
Bryden, Andrew, 140, 168. 
Buildings at mouth of shaft, 176. 
Buntons in shaft, 89. 
Butler, Col. Lord, 56. 
Butt cleavage in bituminous mines. 

194. 
Butty, 114. 

Calamities, 17. 

Candles, use of, in mines, 162. 

Cannel coal, 6, 13. 

Carbondale Mines, fall in, 140. 

Carboniferous age, 3. 

Carboniferous era, animal life of, 18. 

Carboniferous plants, 14-16. 

Carriage in shaft, 90. 

Cartridge, how made and used, 117. 

Cave holes, 137. 

Cenozoic time, 4. 

Chain pillars, 109. 

Chamber, car track in, 103 ; descrip- 
tion of, 100 ; length of, 102 ; scene 
at face of, 131. 

Charcoal, process of formation, 10. 

Charles, John, 50. 

Chest, miner's, 120. 

Choke damp, 169. 

Cist, Charles, 48. 

Cist, Jacob, 52, 58. 

Coal, classification of, 7 ; originally 
all bituminous, 12 ; origin of, 8 ; 
production, by corporations, 70; 
specific gravity of, what is it ? 6. 

Coal dust, explosive quality of, 172. 

Coal lands, division of, 69 ; invest- 
ments in, 68 ; leasing of, 71 ; value 
of, 70. 

Coal mining by corporations, 72. 

Coal plants, age of, 3. 

Coal seams, number and thickness 
of, 22, 23. 



244 



INDEX. 



Coal-waste, heaps of, 191. 

Conglomerate, 76. 

Conifers, 17. 

Corve, in British coal mines, 205. 

Cost of different methods of entry, 
92. 

Counter-gangway, 105. 

Crahan, Martin, story of, 220. 

Creeping pillars, 136. 

Crezot Mine, accident at, 170. 

Crop falls, 139. 

Cross-headings, 95. 

Crowbar, miner's tool, 121. 

Crust of earth, subsidence of, etc. , 
24. 

" Cry of the Children," Mrs. Brown- 
ing's, 207. 

Culm, its disposition and use, 190. 

Curr, John, 90. 

Davy, Sir Humphrey, experiments 
of, 162. 

Decapitation of coal seams, 29. 

Delaware and Hudson gravity rail- 
road, 66 ; canal, 66. 

Diamond drill, 79. 

Dip of strata, 29. 

Door boy, duties of, etc., 149, 214. 

Doors in mines, 149. 

Drainage in mines, 154. 

Drift, as a mode of entry, 80. 

Drilling, by diamond drill, 79 ; by 
hand, 78 ; by rope method, 78 ; by 
spring pole method, 78. 

Drill, machine hand, 116; miner's, 
116. 

Driver boss, his duties, etc., 113. 

Driver boy, duties of, etc., 113, 210, 
213. 

Dump shute bars in breaker, 185. 

Eagle Shaft, disaster at, 168. 
Early mining methods, 94. 
Eastern middle coal field, 33. 
Electricity in breakers, 217 ; in 

mines, 105, 122, 127, 213. 
Enaliosaurs, 20. 
Entrances in mines, 101 . 
Entries in bituminous mines, 195, 

196. 
Evans, Oliver, 52. 
Experiments with anthracite, 52, 53. 

Face cleavage in bituminous mines, 

194. 
Face of chamber, 101. 
Falls of roof and coal, 125, 135. 
Fan for ventilation, 151 . 
Fault in strata, 26. 
Felling Colliery, disaster at, 162. 
Fell, Judge Jesse, 53. 



Females in British coal mines, 206. 
Ferns of coal era, 16. 
Fire boss, duties of, etc., 112, 166. 
Fire damp, characteristics of, 160; 

explosions of, 161 ; in abandoned 

workings, 166. 
Fishes, age of, 3 ; of Carboniferous 

age, 19. 
Fissures in strata, 26. 
Flanigan, John, 94. 
Flowers in Carboniferous age, 21. 

Gangways, beginning of, 95 ; descrip- 
tion of, 97 ; direction of, 98 ; driv- 
ing, 113; length of, 104; walking 
in, 129. 

Gases not confined to coal measures, 
159. 

Germany, mining of coal in, 37. 

Ginther, Philip, 47. 

Girls in British coal mines, 205. 

Gore, Obadiah, experiments of, 45. 

Graff, Frederick, 52. 

Great Summit Mine, 57. 

Guibal, inventor of fan, 152. 

Guides in shaft, 90. 

Hammer, miner's, 121. 
Head-frame at mouth of shaft, 177. 
Health of mine workers, 153. 
Hennepin, Father, explorer, 38. 
Hillegas, Michael, 48. 
Hoisting apparatus at shaft, 177. 
Hollenback, Colonel George M., 

56. 
Horsebacks in coal seams, 28. 
Hosie, John, adventure of, 145. 
Hurrier in British mines, 205. 

I Inclined planes in mines, J05. 

Indians, coal known to, 37, 43, 44. 
: Inside slopes, 106. 
: Invertebrates, age of, 3. 
J Investments in coal lands, 68. 

Jenkins, Henry, 180. 

Laborers, duties of, etc., 114, 122. 
Lackawanna region, early coal trade 

in, 65. 
Lagging, its use, etc., 82. 
Lamp, miner's, 121. 
Laplace, astronomer, 1. 
Lehigh coal, early trade in, 57, 58, 

62. 
Lepidodendrids, 17. 
Lesehot, inventor, 79. 
i Lift mining, 85, 107. 
Light carbureted hydrogen, 159. 
Lignite, 6, 11. 
Loading place in breaker, 189. 



INDEX. 



245 



Localities In which coal is found, 31, 

32. 
Locomotives in mines, 199. 
London, burning of coal in, 36. 
Long wall mining system, 110. 
Loyalsock coal field, 34. 
Lump coal, bituminous, 202. 

Machine for mining soft coal, 197. 

Mammals, age of, 4, 12. 

Man, age of, 4. 

Marsh gas, composition of, etc., 160. 

Mellen and Bishop, experimenters, 
64. 

Mesozoic time, 4. 

Mine, anthracite, number of em- 
ployees in, 112. 

Mine boss, duties, etc., 112. 

Mine car, 123. 

Mine, darkness in a, 133 ; in an aban- 
doned, 134 ; silence in a deserted, 
132. 

Mine law of 1870 and 1885, 208. 

Miner, Charles, 58. 

Miner, appearance of, 227 ; character 
and ambition of, 230 ; clothing of, 
228; duties of, etc., 114, 122, 124 ; 
home and outside occupation of, 
226 ; nativity of, 228. 

Mines, flooding of, 156. 

Miocene period, 12. 

Mules in mines, 212. 

Nanticoke, accident at, 157. 
Nebular Hypothesis, 1. 
Needle, miner's, 117. 
Newcastle, carrying coals to, 37. 
Nobles, David, hunter, 65. 
Northern coal field, 33. 
Nut coal, bituminous, 202. 

Open quarry mining, 80. 
Outcrop of strata, 29, 75. 

Paleozoic time, 3. 

Pannier women in British mines, 

205. 
Paris, burning of coal in, 37. 
Partings in coal seams, 23. 
Peat, 6, 11. 
Pennsylvania, coal fields of, 32, 33, 

34. 
Picking machine in breaker, 187. 
Picking shute in breaker, 186. 
Pick, miner's, 121. 

Pillar and breast mining system, 99. 
Pillars at foot of shaft, 95 ; creeping, 

136 ; robbing of, 133 ; slipping, 

136. 
Pinch in a coal mine, 28. 
Pittsburgh, coal beds near, 193 ; coal 



trade of, 42 ; discovery of coal 

near, 41. 
Pittsburg, Kansas, disaster at, 172. 
Pockets in breaker, 189. 
Props, use and setting of, 114. 
Prospecting for coal, 75. 
Pump mining, 155. 
Pumpway in shaft, 155. 
Putter, in British mines, 205. 

Rats in mines, 212. 

Reptiles, age of, 4, 12. 

Rhode Island, coal in, 32, 40. 

Rib of coal, 101. 

Richmond coal field, 38. 

Robbing pillars, 133. 

Robinson, John W., 58. 

Rocky Mountains, 20. 

Rolls in breaker, 179. 

Rolls in coal seams, 28. 

Rooms in bituminous mines, 195. 

Run of mine, bituminous coal, 202. 

Safety carriage, 91. 

Safety lamps, how to use, 165 ; in- 
vention of, 163. 

Schuylkill region, early coal trade 
in, 62, 64. 

Scotland, mining of coal in, 37. 

Scraper, in bituminous mines, 198. 

Scraper, use of, 117. 

Screen, revolving, in breaker, 180. 

Semi-anthracite coal, 8. 

Shaft, compartments of, 89 ; de- 
scending a, 128 ; foot of, 128 ; in 
bituminous mines, 199 ; in steep- 
pitching seams, 109; location and 
depth of, 86 ; sinking of, 87 ; water 
in, while sinking, 154. 

Sheaves in head-frame, 177. 

Shoemaker, Colonel George, 62. 

Shovel, miner's, 121. 

Sigillariae, 17. 

Slack, bituminous waste, 202. 

Slate picker's duties, etc., 186. 

Sledge, miner's, 121. 

Slipping pillars, 136. 

Slope, dimensions of, 85 ; entrance 
by, 84; in steep-pitching seams, 
85. 

Smith, Abijah, 56. 

Smith, John, 56. 

Smut of coal, 77. 

Southern coal field, 32. 

Sphagnum, 11. 

Splits of the air current, 148. 

Squeeze in a mine, 28, 136. 

Squib, use of, 118. 

Stair shaft in bituminous mines, 200. 

States in which coal is found, 31, 32. 

Steep-pitching seams, mining in, 107. 



246 



INDEX. 



Stigmaria, 18. 

Stockton Mines, accident at, 139. 

Strike of strata, 29. 

Strikes among miners, 225. 

Summit Hill Mine, 80. 

Sump in mine, 96. 

Surface, disturbance of, by falls, 138. 

Susquehanna River, coal trade, 41. 

Swamp in mines, 29. 

Symbols marked on cars, 223. 

Synclinals, 25. 

Tamping, process of, 118. 
Temperature in mines, 210. 
Terrace in coal outcrop, 77. 
Theophrastus, 35. 
Tipple, at the bituminous mines, 201, 

203. 
Tunnel, entrance by, 82. 
Tunnels in mine interiors, 84, 106. 
Turnbull, William, 58. 

Ventilation by fan, 151 ; by open 
furnace, 150 ; in bituminous mines, 
199 ; principle of, in mines, 97, 148. 

Von Storch, H. C. L., 65. 



Wages of miners, 224 ; computing 

and payment of, 222 ; of boys, 213- 

215; sliding scale for computing, 

224. 
Waste in coal mining, 134; of the 

coal measures, 28. 
Water, driving workings toward, 155 ; 

in mine, 96 ; tonnage of, hoisted, 

155. 
Weighing coal, 223. 
Weiss, Colonel Jacob, 48. 
Western middle coal field, 33. 
West Pittston, disaster at, 175. 
White & Hazard, coal trade of, 62 ; 

experiments of, 60. 
Wilcox, Crandal,56. 
Wings in shaft, 91. 
Woodward breaker, 121. 
Working pillars, 136. 
Wright, Joseph, 56. 
Wurts, William and Maurice, 65. 
Wyoming coal field, 33. 
Wyoming valley, discovery of coal 

in, 45 ; early coal trade of, 56. 

Ziegler, Charles W., 188. 



